Humor­ous Irony in Guild House and BEST Prod­ucts Stores

Communication Breakdown

In 1966, Guild House, a res­i­dence for the elder­ly which had recent­ly been com­plet­ed by Ven­turi and Rauch, Copp and Lip­pin­cott in Philadel­phia, was fea­tured in Robert Venturi’s Com­plex­i­ty and Con­tra­dic­tion in Archi­tec­ture, as part of the projects list con­clud­ing the architect’s man­i­festo.[1]

In 2016, the 50^th anniver­sary of the book, a pho­to­graph of Guild House was post­ed on the Red­dit thread r/ArchitecturePorn, under the title ​“The many win­dows of Venturi's com­plex and con­tra­dic­to­ry Guild House in Philadel­phia, one of the most influ­en­tial build­ings in the last six­ty years.” A Red­di­tor commented:

Notwith­stand­ing its infor­mal lan­guage, the com­ment could qual­i­fy as archi­tec­tur­al crit­i­cism, con­sid­er­ing both its struc­ture and lev­el of detail. Mov­ing down­wards from the anten­na on the roof to the entrance, the com­men­ta­tor gives a metic­u­lous descrip­tion of the main ele­ments of the façade, before con­sid­er­ing the build­ing in its imme­di­ate and aes­thet­ic context. 

On close read­ing, par­al­lels can even be found between the com­ment and the way Guild House is described in Com­plex­i­ty and Con­tra­dic­tion, and even more so in Learn­ing from Las Vegas, co-writ­ten by Ven­turi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour in 1972.[3] For almost every detail in the Red­dit com­ment, there is a cor­re­spond­ing state­ment by the archi­tects. This cor­re­spon­dence is in fact so great that one begins to won­der whether the comment’s author was not writ­ing from a lay per­spec­tive but was famil­iar with the con­tent of the two archi­tec­tur­al trea­tis­es.[4]

Specif­i­cal­ly, the archi­tects see the ​“dinky”[5] anten­na as a banal, func­tion­al object that might, how­ev­er, when gold and uncon­nect­ed, evoke a mon­u­men­tal­i­ty akin to rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al or abstract sculp­tures, cel­e­brat­ing the elderly’s obses­sion with TV.[6] The white, glazed-brick line inter­cept­ing the win­dows of the fifth floor works togeth­er with the dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly large arched win­dow and the ​“white first sto­ry” to divide the facade into three uneven sec­tions. The grand scale of this ​“giant order” or ​“clas­sic juke­box front” is sup­pos­ed­ly rem­i­nis­cent of a Renais­sance palace, and is meant to con­trast the small­er scale of the six actu­al, equal in height floors, sug­gest­ed in the com­po­si­tion of the win­dows. The ​“crap­py”[7] bal­cony rail­ings are inten­tion­al­ly con­ven­tion­al per­fo­rat­ed steel pat­terns, just on a blown-up scale, while the ​“stu­pid-ass” let­ter­ing is ​“par­tic­u­lar­ly ugly and ordi­nary in its explic­it com­mer­cial asso­ci­a­tions.” The black gran­ite col­umn, ​“chode”[8] in the Red­dit com­ment, ​“excep­tion­al and fat” in Learn­ing from Las Vegas, both enhances and under­mines the mon­u­men­tal­i­ty of the entrance, by plac­ing focus on it while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly imped­ing entry. The ​“weak” win­dows, fea­tured in a close-up pho­to­graph in Learn­ing from Las Vegas, are yet anoth­er uncon­ven­tion­al manip­u­la­tion of a famil­iar form, in this case the dou­ble-hung win­dow, through changes in shape, scale, and context.

The com­men­ta­tor con­cludes that Guild House is an ​“ugly lump” which resem­bles, but does not equal in beau­ty, Philadel­phia row hous­es. But it is exact­ly their con­ven­tion­al brown brick walls and dou­ble-hung win­dows that the archi­tects of Guild House used as inspi­ra­tion.[9] Once again, the Red­dit com­ment does not rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer from the way Ven­turi, Scott Brown, and Izenour describe the build­ing. ​“Crap­py and Total­ly Lame,” after all, might as well stand for a crud­er alter­na­tive of ​“Ugly and Ordinary”:

How­ev­er, while both the Red­di­tor and the archi­tects name Guild House ugly and ordi­nary, the lat­ter don’t real­ly mean it. Guild House may fea­ture con­ven­tion­al, tra­di­tion­al, and ver­nac­u­lar ele­ments, but it simul­ta­ne­ous­ly alludes to what the authors call ​“Hero­ic and Orig­i­nal” archi­tec­ture. Through its clas­si­cal, tri­par­tite, and sym­met­ri­cal com­po­si­tion, along with the orna­men­tal sculp­ture at its top, the building’s façade becomes ​“iron­i­cal.”[11]

Guild House is not pure­ly ugly and ordi­nary. Through sub­tle twists in con­ven­tions and expec­ta­tions, it inten­tion­al­ly sub­verts the lan­guage of hero­ic and orig­i­nal archi­tec­ture, acknowl­edg­ing its nec­es­sary con­tra­dic­tions. Ugly and ordi­nary ele­ments are used, but not whole­heart­ed­ly; the inten­tion is still to cre­ate beau­ti­ful and excep­tion­al architecture.

And yet, the Red­dit com­ment does not seem to get the irony. If asked ​“Is bor­ing archi­tec­ture inter­est­ing?” its author would prob­a­bly reply, ​“No; bor­ing archi­tec­ture is bor­ing.” What the com­ment even­tu­al­ly high­lights is a fail­ure of communication. 

Not much more than one-and-a-half-hour dri­ve away from Guild House, but more than 20 years ear­li­er, a sim­i­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tion break­down occurred. In 1996, The Bal­ti­more Sun report­ed the deci­sion to demol­ish Tilt Show­room in Tow­son, Mary­land, fol­low­ing up with the cov­er­age of the event next year.[12] The retail store had been com­plet­ed in 1976 by the archi­tec­tur­al office SITE (Sculp­ture In The Envi­ron­ment), found­ed by Ali­son Sky and James Wines in the begin­ning of the decade. Tilt Build­ing was part of a com­mis­sion of nine retail stores by cat­a­logue mer­chant Best Prod­ucts Com­pa­ny, a col­lab­o­ra­tion which last­ed from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. The own­ers of the com­pa­ny, Frances and Syd­ney Lewis, were art col­lec­tors inter­est­ed in merg­ing com­mer­cial archi­tec­ture with pub­lic art, offer­ing a twist to the banal and oper­a­tional ​“big-box” store type of the US road­side.[13]

As sug­gest­ed by its name, the Tilt Building’s entrance façade appeared lift­ed at one side, with only one cor­ner touch­ing the ground. As a result, the open­ings which nor­mal­ly sig­ni­fy and func­tion as entry points were sus­pend­ed in mid-air. Below them, a gap­ing hole was formed, seem­ing­ly allow­ing free access to the inte­ri­or space. [ 5 ]

The arti­cles in The Bal­ti­more Sun includ­ed com­ments by local res­i­dents, com­pa­ny employ­ees, and demo­li­tion onlook­ers. Apart from enthu­si­as­tic endorse­ments and appre­ci­a­tion for the building’s humour, there were dis­ap­prov­ing remarks too, rang­ing from rea­son­able to ridicu­lous. A res­i­dent found it ​“hideous,” because it looked ​“like an unfin­ished build­ing.” The store man­ag­er recalled, ​“with a laugh,” peo­ple ask­ing if the façade was an acci­dent, and recount­ed the fol­low­ing, seem­ing­ly improb­a­ble interaction:

As with Guild House, one of Tilt Building’s design­ers, James Wines, wrote a book to explain and jus­ti­fy SITE’s work. De-Archi­tec­ture, pub­lished in 1987, cul­mi­nat­ed in an extend­ed descrip­tion of SITE’s projects, includ­ing Best Prod­ucts Show­rooms, as an appli­ca­tion of the con­cept of ​“de-archi­tec­ture.” Wines defined de-archi­tec­ture as a design process meant to ques­tion the archi­tec­tur­al sta­tus-quo, by ​“dis­sect­ing, shat­ter­ing, dis­solv­ing, invert­ing, and trans­form­ing” its assump­tions and rules. De-archi­tec­ture would metaphor­i­cal­ly break archi­tec­ture apart and make some­thing new out of its ruins.[15]

Tilt Build­ing shows that SITE’s mode of ques­tion­ing was not mere­ly a fig­u­ra­tive attack on archi­tec­ture, but also a lit­er­al employ­ment of images of incom­plete­ness and destruc­tion to chal­lenge the expec­ta­tions that archi­tec­ture should appear sta­ble and func­tion­al. Rather than express­ing its inter­nal organ­i­sa­tion and struc­ture sym­bol­i­cal­ly on its façade, the store reveals its inte­ri­or through lift­ing the bar­ri­er sep­a­rat­ing it from the out­side, ridi­cul­ing the idea of ​“form fol­lows func­tion.”[16]

Since de-archi­tec­ture is pre­oc­cu­pied with themes of destruc­tion and imped­ing func­tion, Wines would agree that SITE’s build­ing looks unfin­ished and acci­den­tal. How­ev­er, in the firm’s case, unlike the building’s com­men­ta­tors, this is per­ceived as inten­tion­al. And obvi­ous­ly, the build­ing only appeared destroyed and dys­func­tion­al; to prop­er­ly oper­ate as a store, a sec­ond, glass façade behind the tilt­ed one sep­a­rat­ed inte­ri­or from exte­ri­or space.

In this case too, part of the audi­ence did not get the irony.

Double Standards

For lit­er­ary the­o­rist Lin­da Hutcheon, it is exact­ly this poten­tial of irony to fail that is dis­tinc­tive about it–even more so than its com­mon­ly agreed seman­tic inter­pre­ta­tion as ​“say­ing some­thing oth­er than what is meant.” She empha­sis­es the impor­tance of this affec­tive qual­i­ty, which she names ​“irony’s edge,” by using it for the title of her book on irony as a polit­i­cal dis­cur­sive practice.

Con­trary to irony’s per­cep­tion as intel­lec­tu­al detach­ment, Hutcheon argues that as a social inter­ac­tion, it is nec­es­sar­i­ly involved in rela­tion­ships of pow­er and evokes affec­tive respons­es. Exclu­sion is its unde­ni­able part. There are the­o­ries, Hutcheon points out, that argue irony nec­es­sar­i­ly requires an audi­ence that does not under­stand it; irony might even require the per­cep­tion of such an audi­ence as ​“oth­er” by those who under­stand it. When one fails to get irony, neg­a­tive emo­tions can ensue, rang­ing from dis­com­fort to deri­sion. With its ​“attri­bu­tion of an eval­u­a­tive, even judg­men­tal atti­tude,” irony can then be seen as involv­ing ​“per­pe­tra­tors,” ​“tar­gets,” and a ​“com­plic­i­tous audi­ence.”[17]

And yet, the way irony is usu­al­ly talked about con­cerns what hap­pens when it suc­ceeds. This is cer­tain­ly the case for the crit­i­cal dis­course on post­mod­ernism, which archi­tec­ture has played a major role in shap­ing, with irony con­sid­ered one of its con­sti­tu­tive ele­ments.[18]

Hutcheon argues that there is a ten­den­cy to view both post­mod­ernism and irony com­pre­hen­sive­ly, either in a cel­e­bra­to­ry or crit­i­cal way.[19] Her obser­va­tion applies to the polarised debate over the rev­o­lu­tion­ary or reac­tionary poten­tial of the ver­sion of iron­ic post­mod­ernism pro­mot­ed by the 1980 Archi­tec­ture Bien­nale in Venice, ​“The Pres­ence of the Past.” In his recent account of the exhi­bi­tion, Stylianos Gia­mare­los uncov­ers the neglect­ed, defin­ing role of Robert Stern in estab­lish­ing the canon­i­cal, nar­row con­cep­tion of post­mod­ernism as a style, focused on com­mu­nica­tive archi­tec­ture and pop­u­lar sym­bol­ism with con­sumerist and his­tori­cist ref­er­ences.[20] It is with­in this con­cep­tion of post­mod­ernism that Guild House and Best Prod­ucts Stores are usu­al­ly locat­ed.[21]

Charles Jencks, who was invit­ed to join the Biennale’s prepara­to­ry com­mit­tee of crit­ics by cura­tor Pao­lo Por­togh­e­si, even­tu­al­ly embraced Stern’s approach, as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­tin­ue his project of con­cep­tu­al­is­ing post­mod­ernism as a move­ment.[22] Look­ing back at his work as a self-pro­claimed ​“par­tic­i­pant, par­ti­san and some­time crit­ic of PM archi­tec­ture”[23] in the 2011 book The Sto­ry of Post-Mod­ernism: Five Decades of the Iron­ic, Icon­ic and Crit­i­cal in Archi­tec­ture, Jencks iden­ti­fies irony as a recur­rent theme of his year­long the­o­ri­sa­tions.[24] Nam­ing ​“Post-Mod­ern Clas­si­cism” the ​“iron­ic inter­na­tion­al style,” Jencks sees irony as a his­tor­i­cal and orna­men­tal com­mu­nica­tive tool–postmodernism’s ​“nec­es­sary men­tal set”. He empha­sis­es that this kind of irony is a pos­i­tive one–a way to revis­it the past with enjoy­ment.[25]

Ken­neth Framp­ton, how­ev­er, who was also invit­ed to Portoghesi’s prepara­to­ry team, was sus­pi­cious of irony. Not sat­is­fied with the turn the exhi­bi­tion took, he with­drew from the com­mit­tee. He opposed the Biennale’s total­is­ing, styl­is­tic, and his­tori­cist mes­sage, and instead devel­oped a diver­gent approach focused on how archi­tec­ture could respond to spe­cif­ic locales.[26] Frampton’s stance on irony is explic­it in his 1983 Per­spec­ta arti­cle on ​“Prospects for a Crit­i­cal Region­al­ism,” where he clear­ly sep­a­rates his approach from iron­ic quo­ta­tions of place whose main pur­pose is to func­tion as com­mu­nica­tive signs.[27] This post­mod­ern embrace of pop­u­lar cul­ture ulti­mate­ly func­tions, for him, as adver­tis­ing, and is there­fore polit­i­cal­ly and social­ly com­plic­it in per­pet­u­at­ing the very cul­ture it attacks.

Lin­da Hutcheon reminds us, though, that there is no inher­ent rela­tion­ship between irony and spe­cif­ic polit­i­cal or ide­o­log­i­cal posi­tions. Irony is not rad­i­cal or con­ser­v­a­tive in essence. Rather, it can func­tion as either, depend­ing on the con­text of its use.[28] This is what Hutcheon calls the ​“tran­sid­e­o­log­i­cal pol­i­tics” of irony. 

She uses the verb ​“hap­pen,” rather than ​“get,” to describe how irony oper­ates, as it only occurs when interpreted–either by its design­er or its audi­ence.[29] It is not a fixed device, but a result of a com­plex process of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, where inten­tion and inter­pre­ta­tion can be in ten­sion.[30]

It is impor­tant, then, to look at how irony oper­ates in indi­vid­ual cas­es, not only in terms of how it is intend­ed to achieve com­mu­ni­ca­tion but also in how it fails to do so.

When archi­tects use irony inten­tion­al­ly, which exact­ly is the audi­ence they aim to address and who do they want to leave out? Who final­ly gets the irony? And most impor­tant­ly, what hap­pens with those who don’t?

A Common Tool

To Hutcheon, irony is more than a phe­nom­e­non observed in every­day speech; it is a ​“dis­cur­sive strat­e­gy” which can also oper­ate in the for­mal lev­el of text, music, and image. While recog­nis­ing that iro­nist and audi­ence can­not be sep­a­rat­ed in the study of irony, Hutcheon uses the per­spec­tive of the iro­nist to define the prac­tice as ​“the inten­tion­al trans­mis­sion of both infor­ma­tion and eval­u­a­tive atti­tude oth­er than what is explic­it­ly pre­sent­ed.”[31]

Guild House and Best Prod­ucts Stores add anoth­er lev­el at which irony can oper­ate to Hutcheon’s list; archi­tec­tur­al form. With them, irony ​“hap­pens,” at least from the per­spec­tive of the iro­nists, in this case, the archi­tects. Com­plex­i­ty and Con­tra­dic­tion, Learn­ing from Las Vegas, and De-Archi­tec­ture describe the build­ings as exam­ples of archi­tec­ture that can suc­cess­ful­ly com­mu­ni­cate, employ­ing irony as an inten­tion­al, strate­gic design tool. The texts defend this kind of irony in a very sim­i­lar way and offer a chance to look at irony as Hutcheon does, ​“from exam­ples,” ​“in use,” in its unequiv­o­cal­ly polit­i­cal and social con­text, and beyond grand, gen­er­al claims.[32]

Although De-Archi­tec­ture was writ­ten 20 years after Com­plex­i­ty and Con­tra­dic­tion, both texts detect the prob­lem of archi­tec­ture in lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with its audi­ence. The solu­tion the authors pro­pose, after pre­sent­ing their inspi­ra­tions from var­i­ous his­tor­i­cal exam­ples in the­mat­ic rather than chrono­log­i­cal order,[33] is to employ mass media and con­sumerist iconog­ra­phy over mod­ernist for­mal abstrac­tion, as a more appro­pri­ate archi­tec­tur­al lan­guage, more eas­i­ly under­stood by the pub­lic. Ven­turi does not shy away from the oper­a­tive char­ac­ter of his criticism:

Wines, in an inter­view on his book, echoes this idea by con­cep­tu­al­is­ing SITE’s build­ings as mate­ri­alised manifestoes:

Before con­sid­er­ing how the texts view irony as a spe­cif­ic, applied prac­tice, it is worth not­ing that irony per­vades them in oth­er ways too, for exam­ple as a rhetor­i­cal trope.[36] While crit­i­cis­ing mod­ernism for sim­plis­tic uni­ver­sal­i­ty and impos­si­ble utopi­an solu­tions, both Ven­turi and Wines use the par­a­digm of the man­i­festo to prop­a­gate their ideas. The title of Com­plex­i­ty and Con­tra­dic­tion​’s first chap­ter describes the work as a ​“gen­tle man­i­festo,” defend­ing a ​“non­straight­for­ward archi­tec­ture”[37] and pre­fig­ur­ing the use of irony as both a writ­ing and design prac­tice. A man­i­festo is not sup­posed to be gen­tle, and archi­tec­ture that is not straight­for­ward must mean more than what it appears to mean. Sim­i­lar­ly, De-Archi­tec­ture argues that the 20^th cen­tu­ry ​“man­i­festo mania” shift­ed archi­tec­tur­al writ­ing from estab­lish­ing sets of aes­thet­ic rules to pre­sent­ing archi­tec­ture as a means for polit­i­cal or social rev­o­lu­tion. Even though Wines crit­i­cis­es these approach­es as too strict, absolute, and uncom­mu­nica­tive, he presents his own work as just anoth­er man­i­festo, a con­tri­bu­tion to a con­tin­u­ing tra­di­tion.[38] The authors are not com­plete­ly sin­cere in their use of neg­a­tive, deroga­to­ry terms like ​“bor­ing,” ​“ugly and ordi­nary,” or ​“de-archi­tec­ture” either. 

The authors’ response to utopi­an mod­ernism becomes a more detached, less seri­ous approach to archi­tec­ture. Their pro­posed solu­tions, although new, are not there to save the world, but to make a com­ment about it. Ven­turi, in Com­plex­i­ty and Con­tra­dic­tion, explic­it­ly con­nects irony with the accep­tance of a decreased capac­i­ty for archi­tects to bring about change:

Wines detects a decrease in archi­tects’ pow­er dur­ing his time too and sim­i­lar­ly sug­gests accep­tance as a solution:

This move from solv­ing social prob­lems to high­light­ing them brings to mind the roman­tic con­cep­tion of irony as a dis­tanced approach to life, marked by indif­fer­ence, intel­lec­tu­al detach­ment, and a con­tin­u­ous­ly ques­tion­ing atti­tude to any estab­lished world­views.[41]

The roman­tic con­cep­tion of irony also acknowl­edges a nec­es­sary oppo­si­tion between real­i­ty and appear­ances, an idea that influ­enced the mid-20^th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can New Crit­ics,[42] who in turn pro­vid­ed an inspi­ra­tion for Com­plex­i­ty and Con­tra­dic­tion.[43] In its third chap­ter, ​“Ambi­gu­i­ty,” Ven­turi explains that one way of see­ing com­plex­i­ty and con­tra­dic­tion is as a response to the para­dox­i­cal rela­tion­ship, in life and art, between an image’s essence and its appear­ance.[44]

The nec­es­sary split between things and images, real­i­ty and per­cep­tion, is trans­lat­ed by Ven­turi in archi­tec­tur­al terms as the nec­es­sary split between the inte­ri­or and exte­ri­or of a build­ing.[45] In the ninth chap­ter of Com­plex­i­ty and Con­tra­dic­tion, ​“The Inside and the Out­side,” Ven­turi argues that this is a chief way in which con­tra­dic­tion is man­i­fest­ed in archi­tec­ture.[46]

This forms part of a direct cri­tique on what Ven­turi thought that mod­ern archi­tec­ture required: that the out­side needs to result from or to express the inside. In the chap­ter, he offers a series of his­tor­i­cal exam­ples which sym­bol­i­cal­ly dif­fer­en­ti­ate inside and out­side, rang­ing from Roman to mod­ern archi­tec­ture, and util­is­ing dif­fer­ences between top and bot­tom or front and back, resid­ual spaces, and enclo­sures with­in enclo­sures. It is here that it starts to become evi­dent how irony can oper­ate as a design prac­tice. The point of ten­sion where it plays out, is even­tu­al­ly the façade:

Irony then becomes a con­tra­dic­tion between the expec­ta­tions cre­at­ed by the shell of a build­ing (equiv­a­lent to an utter­ance) and the expe­ri­ence evoked by its inte­ri­or organ­i­sa­tion, func­tion, or struc­ture (equiv­a­lent to mean­ing). This approach becomes explic­it in Learn­ing from Las Vegas, which moves from the com­plex­i­ty and con­tra­dic­tion of his­tor­i­cal exam­ples to the pop­u­lar sym­bol­ism of Las Vegas as a start­ing point for a new, com­mu­nica­tive archi­tec­ture. In the sec­ond part of the book, Guild House acts as the par­a­digm for the iron­ic cat­e­go­ry of the ​“dec­o­rat­ed shed,” which fea­tures applied orna­ment on a con­ven­tion­al fit-to-pur­pose struc­ture, against the seem­ing­ly hon­est ​“duck,” which sym­bol­i­cal­ly unites and sub­sumes spa­tial, struc­tur­al, and pro­gram­mat­ic sys­tems.[48]

As shown in the begin­ning, Guild House is inten­tion­al­ly com­posed with an aim to make its exte­ri­or imply some­thing ​“oth­er than” its actu­al struc­ture and pro­gramme. The pri­or­i­ty for its façade design is the cre­ation of a uni­fied com­po­si­tion, rather than an expres­sion of func­tion. The front ele­va­tion is appar­ent­ly divid­ed in three parts, instead of the actu­al six, and a high­er first floor is implied by the orna­men­tal white glazed bricks. The façade includes ele­ments that are not struc­tural­ly required, such as the arched win­dow, and con­ven­tion­al ele­ments, such as dou­ble-hung win­dows, which, through their dif­fer­ent shape and size, are not expect­ed to fit this type of build­ing.[49]

Sim­i­lar­ly, when defin­ing de-archi­tec­ture, Wines talks about archi­tec­ture as a com­ment on the human con­di­tion through con­tra­dic­tion to expec­ta­tions.[50] Just like Ven­turi and Scott Brown, he locates the most pow­er­ful estab­lished archi­tec­tur­al con­ven­tions in the split between exte­ri­or and inte­ri­or, and finds the façade the ide­al point of ten­sion where these can be con­tra­dict­ed. His empha­sis is also on communication–where Ven­turi talks about dra­ma, Wines men­tions narrative:

His tech­nique called ​“inver­sion,” in its sub­ver­sion of con­ven­tion­al mean­ing attached to form, space, and func­tion, is very sim­i­lar to the irony of the ​“dec­o­rat­ed shed”.[52]

Eight of the nine stores by SITE for Best Prod­ucts Com­pa­ny, includ­ing Tilt Build­ing, con­sti­tute appli­ca­tions of this tech­nique.[53] The façade of the Peel­ing Project (Rich­mond, Vir­ginia, 1972) looked as if it was peel­ing away, the Inde­ter­mi­nate Façade (Hous­ton, Texas, 1975) appeared crum­bling and roof­less, and the Notch Build­ing (Sacra­men­to, Cal­i­for­nia, 1979) fea­tured no appar­ent open­ings apart from a retractable cor­ner. The Rain­for­est Build­ing (Hialeah, Flori­da, 1979) cre­at­ed the impres­sion it incor­po­rat­ed local veg­e­ta­tion in its inte­ri­or, and the For­est Build­ing (Rich­mond, Vir­ginia, 1980) appeared cut in half to let a local for­est pass through it. The façade of Cut­ler Ridge Show­room (Cut­ler Ridge, 1980) looked vio­lent­ly torn from the building’s main vol­ume and fur­ther decon­struct­ed into two more parts, the entrance canopy and the doors, scat­tered across the way to the park­ing lot. Final­ly, two facades of the Inside/Outside Build­ing (Mil­wau­kee, Wis­con­sin, 1984) appeared part­ly torn away, to reveal the store’s inte­ri­or space, includ­ing false ceil­ings, electro­mechan­i­cal equip­ment, and even merchandise.

All facades seem­ing­ly break, tilt, or split to reveal part of the build­ings’ inte­ri­or, while in real­i­ty a glass façade behind them oper­ates as a sec­ond, func­tion­al exte­ri­or. The stores there­fore use irony like a ​“pure” dec­o­rat­ed shed and attack the idea of express­ing func­tion in form by essen­tial­ly util­is­ing false-fronts as applied dec­o­ra­tion to con­ven­tion­al big-box sheds.[54] The advanced, labo­ri­ous tech­nolo­gies used to achieve the effects of each orna­men­tal façade is anoth­er iron­ic attack to what Wines sees as the sym­bol­ic cel­e­bra­tion of tech­nol­o­gy by mod­ern archi­tec­ture.[55]

The con­cep­tion of irony as a strate­gic tool in Guild House and Best Prod­ucts Stores reflects Fredric Jameson’s view of post­mod­ernism as a prod­uct of its era, a cul­tur­al expres­sion of late, or con­sumer, cap­i­tal­ism, char­ac­terised by depth­less­ness and aes­thet­ic pop­ulism.[56] The archi­tects of both projects view irony’s poten­tial to func­tion as a com­ment on their con­tem­po­rary cul­ture as large­ly con­fined to the visu­al realm and con­cen­trat­ed on their build­ings’ sur­face. Their iron­ic semi-false fronts deny depth fig­u­ra­tive­ly and lit­er­al­ly, towards a con­cep­tu­al and visu­al flat­ness. ​“Read­ing” irony on these sur­faces is enabled by a dis­so­lu­tion of the bound­ary between high and low cul­ture, as the build­ings embrace the lan­guage of con­sumerism, instead of resist­ing it.

Jame­son argues that any posi­tion on post­mod­ern cul­ture is nec­es­sar­i­ly a polit­i­cal posi­tion on late cap­i­tal­ism. How­ev­er, he leaves the ques­tion of whether post­mod­ern archi­tec­ture can pro­duce rad­i­cal pol­i­tics instead of align­ing with con­sumer val­ues open.[57] In the case of Guild House and Best Prod­ucts Stores, Ven­turi, Scott Brown, and Wines argue, like Jencks, that sur­face, through irony, can pro­duce mean­ing­ful engage­ment and sub­ver­sive social critique.

Degrees of Communication

Despite shar­ing a com­mon con­cep­tion of irony and an aim to engage and bring togeth­er com­mu­ni­ties, the two projects, along with the texts defend­ing them, had diver­gent, even con­trast­ing com­mu­nica­tive effects, suc­ceed­ing and fail­ing in var­i­ous ways. 

Irony’s edge becomes evi­dent in how Vin­cent Scul­ly, in the intro­duc­tion of Com­plex­i­ty and Con­tra­dic­tion, accus­es ortho­dox mod­ernists who react­ed to Venturi’s ideas of an ​“utter lack of irony.”[58] Nev­er­the­less, the book, along with Learn­ing from Las Vegas, quick­ly became part of the canon­i­cal dis­course of the dis­ci­pline, and can be found in most uni­ver­si­ty course read­ing lists on West­ern archi­tec­tur­al historiography.

“I’m not sure my moth­er will read it,” Wines jok­ing­ly admit­ted in an inter­view on De-Archi­tec­ture.[59] Still, he had high hopes for the book’s com­mu­nica­tive poten­tial, wish­ing that it could reach out to audi­ences beyond the dis­ci­pline of archi­tec­ture.[60]

The book did not go unno­ticed at the time,[61] but despite the sim­i­lar­i­ty of approach, for­mat, and mes­sage with Com­plex­i­ty and Con­tra­dic­tion and Learn­ing from Las Vegas, and its sim­pler lan­guage, it does not enjoy the same sta­tus. Unlike these books’ con­tin­u­ous reprint­ing, De-Archi­tec­ture is dif­fi­cult to find, most of its avail­able copies now sold second-hand. 

Wines claims that SITE’s build­ings, espe­cial­ly at the start, were not exact­ly wel­comed with enthu­si­asm from the archi­tec­tur­al pro­fes­sion­al and aca­d­e­m­ic world. Their first build­ing was, to him, what made the firm famous, but also destruc­tive for their rep­u­ta­tion with­in the field.[62] The most canon­i­cal inclu­sion of SITE’s work in the archi­tec­tur­al dis­course of its time was indeed hos­tile. The cat­a­logue of the 1988 exhi­bi­tion Decon­struc­tivist Archi­tec­ture at New York’s Muse­um of Mod­ern Art used an image of the Notch Build­ing to dis­miss it, along with sim­i­lar works that appeared bro­ken apart, as mere sim­u­la­tions of decon­struc­tion and ​“some of the most for­mi­da­ble projects of recent years.”[63] Like­wise, a cap­tion under an image of Inde­ter­mi­nate Façade in a 1975 issue of The Archi­tec­tur­al Review, not con­vinced by the irony of the build­ing, makes it and its archi­tects the tar­get of irony instead:

This is not to say that the reac­tion to Best Prod­ucts Stores was pure rejec­tion. The build­ings did appear in the press, Wines gave inter­views and lec­tures inter­na­tion­al­ly, and SITE fea­tured at art and archi­tec­ture exhi­bi­tions such as the 1980 ​“Build­ings for Best Prod­ucts” at MoMA.[65] Even­tu­al­ly, the stores became part of the dis­ci­pli­nary canon, but maybe slight­ly lat­er than need­ed for them to be pre­served.[66] Unlike Guild House, which was added to the Philadel­phia Reg­is­ter of His­toric Places in 2004,[67] after the liq­ui­da­tion of Best Prod­ucts in 1997, most of the build­ings were changed or demol­ished, and none sur­vives in its orig­i­nal state.[68]

They do sur­vive, though, as images, not as much in archi­tec­tur­al books and aca­d­e­m­ic arti­cles than in mul­ti­ple blogs and forums online, usu­al­ly cre­at­ed by local fans not nec­es­sar­i­ly famil­iar with archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ry.[69] Their com­ments, express­ing love and nos­tal­gia for the now lost build­ings, betray a suc­cess in com­mu­ni­cat­ing with a gen­er­al pub­lic, an opin­ion that Wines shares. In an inter­view on Tilt Build­ing, he appears to val­ue the thoughts the store pro­voked to mul­ti­ple vis­i­tors and passer­by much more than get­ting approval from archi­tects.[70] Guild House, how­ev­er, can­not be said to enjoy the same lev­el of pop­u­lar fascination.

Sim­i­lar­ly to the archi­tects who designed the two projects, the exam­ples of crit­i­cism pre­sent­ed above focus most­ly on the irony of facades, rather than on space use, acces­si­bil­i­ty, com­fort, or per­for­mance. Whether orig­i­nat­ing from the archi­tec­tur­al dis­ci­pline or from a wider pub­lic, these pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive eval­u­a­tions of the works revolve around the ques­tion of whether irony suc­ceeds, on whether its mes­sage can pass, as intend­ed, from the archi­tects to their audi­ence. The ten­sion between these var­i­ous inter­pre­ta­tions points to the insta­bil­i­ty of archi­tec­tur­al mean­ing, and to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion always under­ly­ing inten­tions of communication.

Degrees of Expectation

On a the­o­ret­i­cal lev­el, Com­plex­i­ty and Con­tra­dic­tion, Learn­ing from Las Vegas, and De-Archi­tec­ture favour com­plex­i­ty over sim­plic­i­ty and enjoy break­ing rules by using irony to sub­vert archi­tec­tur­al expec­ta­tions. Ven­turi calls this the use of ​“con­ven­tion uncon­ven­tion­al­ly,”[71] and Wines the use of ​“the famil­iar as the basis for explor­ing the unfa­mil­iar.”[72]

But since the process of trans­lat­ing irony from a fig­ure of speech into archi­tec­tur­al form involves nec­es­sary gaps, when it comes to spe­cif­ic build­ings, con­tra­dic­tion to expec­ta­tions is not always achieved in the same way. A clos­er look at the com­po­si­tion of Guild House and Best Prod­ucts Stores reveals an under­ly­ing dif­fer­ence in how each project mate­ri­alis­es archi­tec­tur­al irony, implied by their diverg­ing com­mu­nica­tive effects: in the type of expec­ta­tions that are to be contradicted.

As the quote below reveals, the archi­tec­ture of Ven­turi, Scott Brown, and Izenour attacks the expec­ta­tions that the archi­tects thought mod­ernism cre­at­ed regard­ing forms: 

SITE’s build­ings, on the oth­er hand, deal with more gen­er­al con­ven­tions regard­ing the process­es of the cre­ation and decay of structures:

Ven­turi and Scott Brown attack mod­ern archi­tec­ture; SITE attack archi­tec­ture itself.

If irony is a mat­ter of inter­pre­ta­tion, as Hutcheon argues, and if it is nec­es­sar­i­ly based on the sys­tem it attempts to defy, then an under­stand­ing of that sys­tem is required for its suc­cess­ful inter­pre­ta­tion when intend­ed. Tak­ing this back to archi­tec­ture, an under­stand­ing of the lan­guage of mod­ernism is required for the inter­pre­ta­tion of post­mod­ern forms as its iron­ic critique.

The ironies of Guild House, such as the con­ti­nu­ity of its façade’s sur­face despite a change in mate­r­i­al, or the rev­e­la­tion of its cur­tain wall by hints at the struc­tur­al columns through the win­dows, can be eas­i­ly missed even by those well-versed in the lan­guage of mod­ern architecture.

The archi­tec­ture that Best Prod­ucts Show­rooms sub­vert, the sub­ur­ban big-box store type, is, on the con­trary, much more embed­ded in the col­lec­tive uncon­scious. On top of that, the lan­guage of destruc­tion used for this sub­ver­sion, also has to do with more com­mon­ly shared assump­tions, regard­ing func­tion, mate­r­i­al, or con­struc­tion. Almost any­one expects an inte­ri­or space to be pro­tect­ed from the out­side, or a build­ing to have a roof. This inter­est in lit­er­al­ly attack­ing archi­tec­ture is evi­dent in the inspi­ra­tion SITE drew from art­work that ren­ders struc­tures unin­hab­it­able or dys­func­tion­al, like Gor­don Matta-Clark’s dis­sect­ed or pierced build­ings, Gian­ni Pettena’s hous­es cov­ered with ice or clay, and Duchamp’s sin­gle door serv­ing two rooms simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. In their adap­ta­tion of high art to every­day, insignif­i­cant struc­tures, SITE trans­lat­ed insta­bil­i­ty and unus­abil­i­ty to a plain image, meant to sig­ni­fy the decay of con­sumer cul­ture and uncer­tain­ty of con­tem­po­rary life.[75]

Accord­ing to Lin­da Hutcheon, irony does not result in the for­ma­tion of new groups that share a con­text, but rather is allowed to hap­pen because of pre-exist­ing ones, which she calls ​“dis­cur­sive com­mu­ni­ties.”[76] The two archi­tec­tur­al approach­es, in a way, are say­ing the same thing; that build­ings should not nec­es­sar­i­ly look strong or func­tion­al, that their form need not express the capa­bil­i­ty of per­form­ing their pur­pose. SITE, how­ev­er, seem to include more peo­ple in their intend­ed dis­cur­sive communities.

The lack of a uni­ver­sal accep­tance of archi­tec­tur­al rules and con­ven­tions points to an addi­tion­al prob­lem for cri­tiques of post­mod­ern irony–one that extends beyond its abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate to the extent of its suc­cess­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tion. This prob­lem can be rein­stat­ed, in Jameson’s terms, as a prob­lem of depth. Refer­ring to the pop­ulism of Venturi’s and Scott Brown’s work, Rein­hold Mar­tin argues that post­mod­ernism might have replaced modernism’s eso­teric lan­guage with one of its own, clas­si­cis­ing the pop­u­lar instead of pop­u­lar­is­ing the clas­si­cal.[77] In this way, mod­ern asso­ci­a­tions with depth can be retained with­in post­mod­ern dis­course. SITE’s irony, instead, is often seen as too super­fi­cial and too steeped in pop­u­lar cul­ture, too com­mu­nica­tive. There is, in oth­er words, a point beyond which post­mod­ern depth­less­ness and aes­thet­ic pop­ulism cease to be appro­pri­ate. Maybe one of the rea­sons why the firm’s build­ings received such strong neg­a­tive reac­tions in acad­e­mia was that the pub­lic liked them too much.

Funny Business

Part of what made Best Prod­ucts Stores pop­u­lar was cer­tain­ly their humour. In De-Archi­tec­ture, Wines men­tions a series of crit­i­cisms Inde­ter­mi­nate Façade received by archi­tects, aca­d­e­mics, and pub­lish­ers, includ­ing: ​“SITE’s work is some kind of joke,” ​“it’s not real archi­tec­ture,” ​“humor of this kind has no place in archi­tec­ture,” ​“noth­ing but a one-lin­er.”[78]

A clos­er look at these com­ments reveals that behind the rejec­tion of the build­ings as jokes lie impli­ca­tions of offen­sive­ness, fak­e­ness, and inap­pro­pri­ate­ness, the same rea­sons which, accord­ing to humour the­o­rist John Mor­re­all, caused a rejec­tion of humour in West­ern philo­soph­i­cal thought. A neg­a­tive per­cep­tion of laugh­ter, orig­i­nat­ing in antiq­ui­ty, and gain­ing strength with Chris­tian­i­ty, led to the per­cep­tion of humour as immoral and irre­spon­si­ble, for its use at the expense of oth­ers and its prac­tice sole­ly for plea­sure.[79] Along these lines, humour against the integri­ty and sta­bil­i­ty of archi­tec­ture might not be eas­i­ly welcomed.

While Hutcheon recog­nis­es that not all irony is humor­ous, she acknowl­edges the com­mon ground between the­o­ries of irony and humour in their affec­tive aspect and their depen­dence on incon­gruity and dis­cur­sive com­mu­ni­ties. Still, she admits avoid­ing to con­sid­er humour in her study, in order to pre­vent an auto­mat­ic rejec­tion of irony as triv­ial just because of a poten­tial asso­ci­a­tion with amuse­ment.[80]

Maybe not all irony is humor­ous, but the irony of Guild House and Best Prod­ucts Stores is. Their design strat­e­gy, beyond con­tra­dict­ing expec­ta­tions, is also meant to pro­voke amuse­ment. As Mor­re­all argues, mir­ror­ing the way the archi­tects of both build­ings describe their design tool, ​“the best humor gets us to see famil­iar things in unfa­mil­iar ways.”[81]

The authors of Learn­ing from Las Vegas use the terms irony and humour with­out a clear dis­tinc­tion and in the same con­text, while still ensur­ing their audi­ence that being humor­ous does not pre­clude being serious: 

Wines also argues that archi­tec­ture needs humor, irony, and fan­ta­sy.[83] In a response to a review of SITE’s work, he clar­i­fies that this humour is meant to be ​“a kind of black humour more than a casu­al gig­gle” or ​“the ​'ha, ha, falling bricks' cat­e­go­ry of analy­sis.” Down­play­ing the ele­ment of amuse­ment is here part of an attempt to make sure that SITE’s irony is seen as seri­ous enough, that it is not dis­missed as frivolous:

These clear­ly stat­ed humor­ous inten­tions did not nec­es­sar­i­ly mat­ter for crit­ics. They might instead have aggra­vat­ed crit­i­cisms and con­tributed to the build­ings’ per­cep­tion as super­fi­cial, with irony reject­ed for none oth­er rea­son than being amusing.

When defend­ing an archi­tec­tur­al work, empha­sis tends to be placed on the way humour ren­ders irony uncrit­i­cal­ly reject­ed. Humour, how­ev­er, can also ren­der irony uncrit­i­cal­ly accept­ed.[85]

The irony of Guild House and Best Prod­ucts Stores is pre­sent­ed by the build­ings’ archi­tects as sub­ver­sive, a self-crit­i­cal approach attack­ing hier­ar­chies and dom­i­nant per­cep­tions of the world. The fact that irony uses the lan­guage of the sys­tem it attacks is here pos­i­tive, mak­ing it pos­si­ble for the mes­sage to be under­stood and show­ing the insta­bil­i­ty of a sup­pos­ed­ly sta­ble sys­tem. But accord­ing to Hutcheon’s tran­sid­e­o­log­i­cal pol­i­tics, although irony is usu­al­ly pre­sent­ed as tak­ing only one side of an argu­ment, it actu­al­ly oper­ates as both doubt­ing a sys­tem by expos­ing its con­ven­tions and sup­port­ing a sys­tem by empha­sis­ing its con­ven­tions. Irony can be ​“both polit­i­cal and apo­lit­i­cal, both con­ser­v­a­tive and rad­i­cal, both repres­sive and democ­ra­tiz­ing.”[86] This qual­i­ty cre­ates a sus­pi­cion of irony as an oppo­si­tion­al tool.[87]

Humour the­o­ry, often inter­pret­ing amuse­ment as the result of per­ceiv­ing incon­gruity, sim­i­lar­ly casts doubts on the degree of humour’s sub­ver­sive­ness. Benign Vio­la­tion The­o­ry, specif­i­cal­ly, holds that to per­ceive some­thing as humor­ous, one needs to over­come the con­cern over a vio­la­tion of a norm, but also to val­ue that norm to an extent.[88] Not only the break­ing of the rule, then, needs to be seen as non-threat­en­ing, but also the rule itself. 

Even when humor­ous irony suc­ceeds, Guild House both attacks and rein­forces the lan­guage of mod­ernism. The work of Ven­turi and Scott Brown, not sur­pris­ing­ly, is often inter­pret­ed as a con­tin­u­a­tion, rather than a rup­ture, with that tra­di­tion. Equal­ly, Best Prod­uct Stores both attack and rein­force the lan­guage of con­sumerism. The more pop­u­lar and under­stand­able the lan­guage that SITE used was, the more atten­tion it would attract, which is exact­ly what hap­pened. Wines, for exam­ple, nar­rates how cus­tomers of For­est Build­ing, the most prof­itable Best Prod­ucts store, would typ­i­cal­ly return inside to buy more things while hav­ing pic­nics in the gar­den which appeared to divide the build­ing.[89]

Behind the view of post­mod­ern irony as overt­ly super­fi­cial, as expressed by crit­ics like Framp­ton, lies this com­plic­i­ty with con­sumerist val­ues. It is exact­ly the sur­face-lev­el appli­ca­tion of irony in Best Prod­ucts Stores that allows, and even rein­forces, the unin­hib­it­ed con­tin­u­a­tion of con­sumerism with­in oth­er­wise con­ven­tion­al store interiors. 

To Mark Fish­er, even suc­cess­ful con­cep­tu­al sub­ver­sion of cap­i­tal­ism is sub­sumed under cap­i­tal­ist real­ism, the per­va­sive belief that no alter­na­tive polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sys­tem is pos­si­ble. Fish­er expos­es how the com­mu­nica­tive poten­tial and out­reach of post­mod­ern irony becomes a prob­lem by quot­ing Slavoj Žižek’s point that ​“even if we do not take things seri­ous­ly, even if we keep an iron­i­cal dis­tance, we are still doing them.”[90] The irony of Best Prod­ucts Stores fails to fight the sys­tem it pur­ports to sub­vert because it alle­vi­ates the guilt of par­tic­i­pa­tion in cap­i­tal­ist exchange by sug­gest­ing that mere dis­ap­proval is suf­fi­cient. Irony, in this case, suc­ceeds in pass­ing a mes­sage, but fails in action.

Crit­ics’ sus­pi­cion of SITE’s humour could be jus­ti­fied con­sid­er­ing Fisher’s con­cerns. Stud­ies of the inter­sec­tions between humour and irony have found that irony is usu­al­ly seen as more crit­i­cal, its affec­tive and eval­u­a­tive atti­tude rid­den with more neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tions.[91] Humour, con­sid­ered light-heart­ed, less con­fronta­tion­al, even triv­ial, can make irony more benign. It can allow bypass­ing irony’s sub­ver­sive side and tar­gets, more eas­i­ly accept­ing its com­plic­i­ty. In oth­er words, humour can soft­en irony’s edge.

Communication Breakdown, Again

Archi­tects and crit­ics who believe in the sub­ver­sive poten­tial of super­fi­cial irony rely on its suc­cess­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Those who oppose irony, on the con­trary, are scep­ti­cal pre­cise­ly because it com­mu­ni­cates suc­cess­ful­ly. Irony’s sup­port­ers think its strength is its oper­a­tion in the realm of thought–irony’s crit­ics view this as the prob­lem. But when putting empha­sis on humor­ous irony as a means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, these archi­tects and crit­ics over­look that irony might be defined not only by its suc­cess, but also by its inher­ent poten­tial for failure. 

In the respons­es to build­ings that began this arti­cle, the dan­ger of irony, its exclu­sion­ary poten­tial, is at work. The irony there does not ​“hap­pen”: the iron­ic details of Guild House and the destruc­tive sym­bol­ism of Tilt Build­ing are tak­en at face value.

While the archi­tects-iro­nists leave the pos­si­bil­i­ty of such inter­pre­ta­tions open by embrac­ing the insta­bil­i­ty of irony, their autho­r­i­al inten­tion recedes into the back­ground. If archi­tec­tur­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion is under­stood as the trans­fer of a mes­sage from an archi­tect to an audi­ence through a build­ing, then mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion is seen as fail­ure. But if com­mu­ni­ca­tion becomes the inter­ac­tion between a build­ing and its audi­ence, inter­pre­ta­tion still takes place – mean­ing is still transmitted. 

When irony fails, and it might do so because of lack of knowl­edge or prox­im­i­ty, it is very pos­si­ble that an observ­er of Guild House will see yet anoth­er ugly and ordi­nary, mod­ern, ​“bauhaus‑y” building–one that fol­lows the very prin­ci­ples that Ven­turi and Scott Brown meant to attack [ 6 ]. But in the case of Best Prod­ucts Stores, dur­ing the time they were still up and run­ning, a speed­ing dri­ver or an inat­ten­tive pass­er-by might, for a moment, see what they would now, after the company’s demise; dan­ger­ous, crum­bling, and decay­ing build­ings [ 7 ].[92] In such cas­es, how­ev­er rare and improb­a­ble they might seem, an archi­tec­ture of con­sumerism might end up fail­ing to con­vince its tar­get audi­ence to enter it. 

This com­mu­ni­ca­tion break­down ulti­mate­ly con­tests the posi­tion that post­mod­ern, sur­face-lev­el irony is nec­es­sar­i­ly unable to pro­duce acts of resis­tance. The mis­align­ment between the intend­ed impact of visu­al cri­tique and the expec­ta­tions of an audi­ence might fail to com­mu­ni­cate sub­ver­sive thought, but nev­er­the­less suc­ceeds in sub­ver­sive action. Mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion and depth­less­ness then work togeth­er to high­light what Fish­er calls for, an unex­pect­ed incon­sis­ten­cy, a pos­si­ble break in the per­va­sive­ness of cap­i­tal­ist real­ism, a hint at a fail­ure, how­ev­er tiny, for its ​“real­i­ty” to remain as all-encom­pass­ing as it presents itself to be.[93]

Coun­ter­in­tu­itive­ly, it is this poten­tial for fail­ure that is most rad­i­cal about Best Prod­ucts Stores.