Prefer richness of meaning to clarity of meaning: accept the complex and contradictory demands of program, structure and context, and resolve them in a “difficult whole” rather than excluding them for the sake of simplicity.
Both-and, not either-or
Let an element do more than one thing and belong to more than one order at once: a wall that is both inside and outside, a column that is both structure and sign.
Venturi calls these “double-functioning elements” and finds them everywhere in historical architecture: the Baroque pilaster that is both a part of the wall and a column, the façade that answers the street while the plan answers the rooms. The inside and the outside of a building need not agree; the gap between them, like a façade detached from the volume behind it, can itself be a source of meaning.
Related rules
A building can carry meaning in two ways: as a duck, whose whole form is shaped into a symbol, or as a decorated shed, a plain, efficient shelter with symbols applied to it. Prefer the shed.
Speak two languages at once: the technical language of modern construction for the profession, and a language of familiar, historical or popular signs for everyone else.
Treat a tall office building as base, shaft and top: an open, accessible ground storey for shops and entrances; an indefinite stack of identical office floors expressed as one; and a distinct attic that closes the composition.
base (1–2 storeys) + shaft (n identical storeys) + attic
Do not design the buildings; write a code. Give each lot a building type, and for each type fix on one sheet where the building stands, how high it rises, where its porch and outbuilding go, whether it may have a tower and where cars are parked; then let any architect design within it.
Bring every house forward to the street with a front porch, and mark the lot line with a white picket fence, each house with a different pattern of fence; build in wood with pitched metal roofs, and allow a small tower where the code permits.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Both-and, not either-or”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/both-and. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.