The Difficult Whole: A Reference Book on the Work of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown edited by Kersten Geers, Jelena Pan?evac, Andrea Zanderigo
Park Books, 2016
Hardcover, 208 pages

"The Difficult Whole" of this book's title refers to chapter ten in Robert Venturi's Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, published by the Museum of Modern Art in 1966. In the chapter, titled "The Obligation Toward the Difficult Whole," Venturi writes: "The difficult whole in an architecture of complexity and contradiction includes multiplicity and diversity of elements in relationships that are inconsistent or among the weaker kinds perceptually." Although this is an intricate statement that requires a chapter to explain, it's clear that Venturi's focus, as in the rest of the classic book, is on architectural form.
In this book published by Park Books in cooperation with FORM Laboratory for Architecture as Form, EPFL / ENAC, the difficult whole refers to an architect's output. As described by editors Geers, Pan?evac, and Zanderigo in their introductory essay: "The Difficult Whole represents the difficult whole of the project in practice" and "The Difficult Whole celebrates the work of Robert Venturi without limitations, without shame." This last statement is telling since, even though John Rauch and Denise Scott Brown are included in the book's subtitle, the editors hone in on Venturi as the person behind the project...