Cameron McEwan on the ‘difficult whole’ as a critical strategy - The Difficult Whole: A Reference Book on Robert Venturi, John Rauch, and Denise Scott Brown Edited and with contributions by Kersten Geers, Jelena Pančevac, and Andrea Zanderigo With photographs by Bas Princen. Switzerland, Park Books, 2016 216pp. Out of print

Abstract

In the concluding chapter of Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1966; repr. 2002), Robert Venturi writes about the notion of the difficult whole: On one level, the difficult whole is a formal and compositional strategy at the scale of architecture focused on the organisation of diverse elements, contradictory forms, and opposing scales in the plan and facade. On an urban level, the difficult whole is a reading of how architecture develops a form or counter form within the ideological field of the city. On a last level, the difficult whole is critical thought. It is a strategy to negotiate conflicting desires, architecture and the city, analysis and project, site and programme, form and history, architect and client, and the difficulty of defining a coherent whole. Venturi termed this a ‘difficult whole’, because ‘the whole is difficult to achieve’.