Both-And

Definition

Venturi's name for architecture's inclusive contradiction: elements and wholes that hold two contradictory readings or functions at once, "both-and" rather than "either-or." In Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966) the phenomenon is described through the conjunctive "yet" — the Villa Savoye "simple outside yet complex inside"; Guarini's Church of the Immaculate Conception "a duality in plan and yet a unity"; an urban street "directional as a route yet static as a place." Its source is contradiction; its basis is hierarchy: "If the source of the both-and phenomenon is contradiction, its basis is hierarchy, which yields several levels of meanings among elements with varying values" (p. 32). The category is explicitly borrowed from literary criticism — Cleanth Brooks on Donne "having it both ways," against a culture "disciplined in the tradition of either-or." Both-and is a medium-level phenomenon (the "or" with a question mark of perceptual ambiguity) as well as a compositional one, and it underwrites the difficult-whole: an architecture which "includes 'both-and' rather than excludes 'either-or'" breeds the ambiguity and tension on which richness of meaning depends.

The concept is distinct from, and a precursor of, Jencks's multivalence (overcoding for multiple semiotic groups): Venturi's double meanings are perceptual and compositional before they are semiotic.

Key Thinkers

• venturi-robert — the concept's author (1966, ch. "The Phenomenon of 'Both-And' in Architecture"); both-and as the compositional core of the postmodern critique of orthodox Modern architecture's "either-or" articulation.
• Cleanth Brooks — the literary source: Donne's art as "having it both ways"; the tradition of both-and against the tradition of either-or (quoted by Venturi). (PAGE NEEDED — see log.)
• Louis Kahn — quoted for the programmatic corollary: "architecture must have bad spaces as well as good spaces"; the gallery as "directional and non-directional, a corridor and room at once." (PAGE NEEDED — see log.)

Related Concepts

• difficult-whole — the whole that both-and composition obligates: unity of inclusion rather than exclusion.
• double-functioning-element — the element-scale counterpart: the part that does two things at once (Venturi: both-and "emphasizes double meanings over double-functions").
• multivalence — Jencks's semiotic descendant: overcoding as designed multiplicity of meaning.
• contradiction-adapted-and-juxtaposed — the two techniques by which contradiction enters composition.
• inflection — the means by which dualities are held together without suppression.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• *Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture* (Venturi 1966) — the concept's chapter (pp. 32–40): the series of conjunctive "yets" (Shodhan House "closed yet open"; Barrington Court "symmetrical yet asymmetrical"); the basilica/central-plan church traditions accommodated by both-and plans (Bernini's Sant'Andrea, Borromini's San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Hagia Sophia); the wrong-at-the-part/right-at-the-whole cases (Hawksmoor's keystones, Michelangelo's Laurentian stairs); and the definitions — "I prefer 'both-and' to 'either-or'" (p. 20); "its basis is hierarchy" (p. 32).
• *Learning from Las Vegas* (1977) — the companion volume relocating the argument from perceptual ambiguity to explicit symbolism.
• Ugly and Ordinary Architecture, or the Decorated Shed (1971) — the architectural-decorated shed defined with a contradictory decoration "and if in the nature of the circumstances, contradictory."

Open Questions

• Both-and presupposes a perceiver able to hold contradictory readings — "simultaneous perception of a multiplicity of levels involves struggles and hesitations for the observer." Is the both-and building legible without the trained eye, or does it re-institute the elite coding Modernism claimed to abolish?
• Does Jencks's multivalence solve a problem Venturi left formally unresolved — how double meanings are addressed to different audiences — or merely restate it semiotically?