Robert Venturi

Architect and writer, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He studied at Princeton, then worked for Louis Kahn before establishing the Philadelphia firm with John Keiser Rauch (1930– ) that became Venturi, Rauch, Scott Brown and Associates (1958). He spearheaded the reaction against Modernism by embracing historical and popular architectural styles, most notoriously the common commercial strip. His seminal Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966) and Learning from Las Vegas - with Denise Scott Brown, his wife as well as partner, and Steven Izenour - (1972) have been influential. His buildings include the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery, London (1991) and the University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute (2004). He received the Pritzker Prize in 1991.

Robert Charles Venturi (June 25, 1925 -) is a Philadelphia-based architect who worked under Eero Saarinen and Louis Kahn before forming his own firm with John Rauch. As a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania, Venturi met his future wife, the architect and planner Denise Scott Brown, who joined the firm in 1967. After Rauch's resignation in 1989, the firm took its current form and was named Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, Inc..

Venturi was a controversial critic of the purely functional and spare designs of modern orthodox architecture and was considered a counterrevolutionary.

Important works by his firm include:

Sainsbury Wing, National Gallery, London Provincial Capitol Building, Toulouse, France Guild House, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Vanna Venturi House, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington

The Vanna Venturi House, designed for Venturi's mother, was recognized as a "Masterwork of Modern American Architecture" by the United States Postal Service in May 2005.