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.
Rules · Theory · Ornament · Use
Duck or decorated shed
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.
The duck is named after a real building on Long Island, a poultry shop built in the form of a giant duck. Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour argued that modern architecture, having banned applied ornament, had made all its buildings into ducks, expressive sculptural forms whose structure and space were distorted to carry a message. The decorated shed separates the two jobs: the shed shelters the program as cheaply as possible, and the sign or the façade says what it is.
Their own Guild House in Philadelphia (1960–63), a plain brick block of flats for the elderly with a large sign over the door and a gold-anodised television aerial on top, is the decorated shed as architecture.
Related rules
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.
Where a building is seen from a moving car across a car park, communication depends on large signs placed at the road, and the building behind them can be a simple 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.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Duck or decorated shed”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/duck-and-shed. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.