The building must do and be many things at once; tensions, ambiguities, and contrasts are results which make architecture; a work of architecture has subplots as well as a plot.
—Robert Venturi

Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown are partners in one of the most influential architectural design and planning firms of the last half-century. Outspoken critics of austere mid-20th-century design, they have infused modernism with a new energy and vitality inspired by Pop Art, popular culture, vernacular architecture, and historical styles. With bold and unorthodox combinations of geometry, color and pattern, they have created an architecture out of the ordinary.

Known equally for their buildings and their thoughtfully considered, ethically informed proposals for urban design, they have urged architects to respect the real conditions of people’s lives and respond creatively in readily understood stylistic terms. Their playfulness, iconoclasm, and use of historical references, have prompted critics to herald Venturi and Scott Brown as the “founders of Postmodernism.” Firmly rejecting this title, Venturi asserts, “There are two ways to be creative: to invent new forms, and to use old forms in new ways. We have chosen to emphasize the latter approach in our design.”

Out of the Ordinary, organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is the first retrospective of the firm’s work in architecture, urban planning, and the decorative arts. Comprising more than 150 drawings, models, photographs, and decorative arts objects, the exhibition surveys their extraordinary careers, from Venturi’s earliest commissions in 1958 to more recent major projects, such as the Irving and Betty Abrams house in Pittburgh (1979-81), The Seattle Art Museum (1984-91), the Sainsbury Wing of The National Gallery in London (1985-91), and the Hotel Mielmonte Nikko Kirifuri, Nikko, Japan
(1992-97).