Double-Functioning Element

Definition

Venturi's term (adapted from Wylie Sypher on Renaissance style) for the architectural element that performs more than one job at once — structural and spatial, functional and symbolic, ornamental and load-bearing. In Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966) it is distinguished from both-and: "the double-functioning element pertains more to the particulars of use and structure, while both-and refers more to the relation of the part to the whole. Both-and emphasizes double meanings over double-functions" (p. 40). The catalogue spans scales: Le Corbusier's Unité brise-soleil ("structure and porches as well as sunscreens"); Kahn's open piers that "harbor" equipment and manipulate light; the alternating piers of S. Maria in Cosmedin that "enclose and direct space as much as they support structure"; Roman counter-vaults that span as well as buttress; Gaudí's tilted pier-buttress; Baroque drip mouldings that become sills, quoin strips that are also pilasters; the balloon frame, "several things at once… between two pure extremes" (frame and skin). The rhetorical element (Ledoux's gateway columns, Furness's oversized ceremonial stair) and the vestigial element are named as its neighbours: each offends orthodox Modern architecture's cult of separation, specialization, and the minimum.

The programmatic extension is the multi-functioning room: "The room with a generic rather than a specific purpose, and with movable furniture rather than movable partitions, promotes a perceptual flexibility rather than a physical flexibility… Valid ambiguity promotes useful flexibility" — against Modern architecture's built-in-furniture specialization, "form evokes function" (pp. 40–47).

Key Thinkers

• venturi-robert — the concept's author and its analytical catalogue (1966, ch. "The Double-Functioning Element").
• Louis Kahn — the principal modern practitioner cited: clusters of columns and "servant" spaces as double-functioning elements; the gallery as corridor and room at once. (PAGE NEEDED — see log.)
• Wylie Sypher — source of the term "double-functioning" (Four Stages of Renaissance Style). (PAGE NEEDED — see log.)

Related Concepts

• both-and — the part-to-whole counterpart of the element's double duty.
• vestigial-element — the element carrying old meaning plus new function; the double-functioning element's temporal variant.
• conventional-element — the standard part whose unconventional recontextualization produces new meaning.
• primary-and-secondary-functions — the Modern functionalist taxonomy the multi-functioning room dissolves.
• inflection — the "partial-functioning element": Venturi's explicit contrast-case, dependent on something outside itself.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• *Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture* (Venturi 1966) — the concept's chapter (pp. 40–48): the multi-functioning building (P.S.F.S. praised against Seagram's camouflage); the multi-functioning room against eighteenth-century specialization; the material taboo broken (Saarinen's Penn dormitory, Rauschenberg's Pilgrim); flat-plate construction ("substance follows structural function; profile follows spatial function"); and "Valid ambiguity promotes useful flexibility."

Open Questions

• Flat-plate construction, balloon frame, and Kahn's piers are double-functioning by structure or trade practice rather than by design intention. Can double-functioning be specified as a design method, or is it always found after the fact?
• Does the multi-functioning room's "perceptual flexibility" survive contemporary programming and furniture systems — or did the open plan absorb and dissolve the argument?