Public Programs @ the Institute
Series: The Kirk Varnedoe Visiting Professor Lecture
Mary McLeod, Columbia University
The “Ordinary Made Extraordinary!”: Robert Venturi from Rome to Nantucket — Tradition, Vernacular Architecture, and the Shingle Style
Tuesday, November 11, 2025, 6:00pm
"With the Trubek and Wislocki Houses, we are in the presence of what modern architects have always said what they most wanted: a true vernacular architecture—common, buildable, traditional in the deepest sense, and of piercing symbolic power." —Vincent Scully, 1974
This talk raises questions regarding common assumptions about the differences between modern and postmodern architecture, focusing on three themes in the early residential work of Robert Venturi—tradition, vernacular architecture, and the Shingle Style. It discusses how ideas and experiences that Venturi was exposed to during his stay at the American Academy in from 1954 to 1956 helped shape his approach to the design of two residential projects: the Trubek and Wislocki houses in Nantucket, Massachusetts (1970–71) and the Cox-Hayden house and guest house/garage on Block Island, Rhode Island (1979–81). It considers, in particular, the potential influence of Ernesto N. Rogers, who was a visitor at the Academy during Venturi’s residency, and of Vincent Scully, whose book The Shingle Style Venturi read near the end of his stay in Rome. It proposes that Venturi’s time in Italy may have paradoxically contributed to his efforts to create an American domestic architecture tied to tradition and locale while still responding to broader cultural influences and contemporary conditions.
Mary McLeod is a professor of architecture at Columbia University, where she teaches architecture history and theory. She was the 2025 Kirk Varnedoe Visiting Professor at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Her research and publications have focused on the history of the modern movement and on contemporary architecture theory, examining issues concerning the connections between architecture and politics. She is the editor of and contributor to the book Charlotte Perriand: An Art of Living, as well as the co-editor of Architecture, Criticism, Ideology and the website Pioneering Women of American Architecture (with Victoria Rosner). Her essays have appeared in journals such as AA Files, Journal of Architecture, Assemblage, JSAH, Casabella, and Oppositions and in books such as Modern Architecture and the Lifeworld, Architecture School, Modern Women, Feminism and Architecture, Building Systems, Architectural Theory since 1968, and Complexity and Contradiction at Fifty.
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