The house Robert Venturi designed for his mother, is a house that is at first difficult to understand, although the house is a simple three bedroom home on a flat site, with a pitched roof, the reality of it is that there are many interesting & more involved parts to the house than what is noticed on the initial observation. For example the roof on such a shaped house would generally be pitched in the opposite direction to the way that it is pitched, which tends to invite the thought of a grand scale to the building, however in actually fact the building is small in scale.
There are intricacies within the design like the stair case, which starts as a fairly standard width stair case, but then widens dramatically only to stop you dead in your tracks as you come face to face with the side of the fire place. inviting you to meander your way around the breast of the fire place to bring you to a point where you need to negotiate a narrow passage to the first floor bedroom.
Also the fact the as a whole that the house is generally symetrical, but on closer observation of the detail, it is actually not completely symetrical, a direction that the architect took, no doubt to try and enhance the experience of the visitor or proprieter.
These are but a few of the dissensions that ly within the building, especially at a time when buildings where thought to be needed to be stripped of there complexities, this house was prominent with them but not in the way of old, but in the way of the new.
VIEW TO THE FRONT OF THE MOTHERS HOUSE
