Editing Robert Venturi (section)

== Early Life and Education ==

Robert Charles Venturi was born in Philadelphia in 1925, the son of Robert Venturi Sr., a wholesale fruit merchant, and Vanna Venturi, whose love of the arts influenced her son's development. Venturi attended Episcopal Academy and Princeton University, where he studied architecture and encountered the work of Jean Labatut, who encouraged engagement with architectural history and contemporary European ideas. After graduation, Venturi won the Rome Prize, allowing study at the American Academy in Rome, where immersion in Italian architecture—particularly Baroque and Mannerist buildings—profoundly shaped his thinking.<ref name="schwartz">{{cite book |last=Schwartz |first=Frederic |title=Mother's House: The Evolution of Vanna Venturi's House in Chestnut Hill |year=1992 |publisher=Rizzoli |location=New York}}</ref>

Venturi worked briefly in the offices of Eero Saarinen and Louis Kahn before establishing independent practice in Philadelphia. His experience with Kahn proved influential, though Venturi would develop ideas that departed significantly from his former employer's monumentalism. Teaching positions at Penn and Yale allowed Venturi to develop his theoretical positions while practice provided opportunities to test them in built form.<ref name="venturi"/>