Editing Robert Venturi (section)

== Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture ==

''Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture'', published by the Museum of Modern Art in 1966, challenged the reigning modernist orthodoxy with arguments for ambiguity, historical reference, and recognition of architecture's complexity. The book's opening declaration—"I like complexity and contradiction in architecture"—announced departure from modernism's preference for clarity and simplicity. Venturi valued "the difficult whole" over modernism's easy consistency, finding richness in buildings that embraced multiple meanings and references.<ref name="schwartz"/>

The book analyzed historical buildings from Michelangelo to Lutyens, finding in their ambiguities and contradictions qualities that modernism had rejected but that Venturi argued were essential to architecture's vitality. Rather than the modernist insistence on "less is more," Venturi proposed "less is a bore." Architecture, he argued, should accommodate complexity rather than reduce it, should embrace contradiction rather than resolve it, should engage with history rather than ignore it. These arguments provided theoretical foundation for postmodernism and influenced architects far beyond those who adopted postmodern aesthetics.<ref name="venturi"/>