“But is not architecture similarly complex in its very inclusion of commodity, firmness, and delight? And are not the wants of program, of structure and mechanical equipment, and of expression, even in single buildings in simple contexts, diverse and conflicting in ways previously unimaginable not to mention the broader scope of city planning? I welcome the problems and exploit the uncertainties. By embracing contradictions as well as complexity, I aim for vitality as well.”
I traveled internationally for the first time last spring for one of my classes. I picked the class purely because of my fascination with London and its intricacies. I had spent a large portion of my childhood reading various novels that took place in Victorian and Georgian London, the history fascinated me. When I thought of London, I thought of Fleet Street, the Tower Bridge, Big Ben, Westminster, Covent Garden, and St. Paul’s. These were the icons of London and British life, they embodied the whole city to me, until I went to London.
I arrived at the London Heathrow airport and was immediately taken aback by the massive glass and steel construction before me. It was an asymmetric imposing building constructed from new materials, the future of architecture. In reality, it was the modern but in my initial ignorance, I had not seen London as having a dichotomy between new and old. The wants of the building, of the city, in the words of Venturi, give way to a complexity and vitality I had not understood before.
Venturi describes the complexity of architecture in terms of the wants of the program, the structure and equipment, the expression. He sees the confliction as a way of creating architecture anew, the complexities and contradictions embody the unimaginable for people. Architecture had become a simplistic fossil of its previous glory and in order to achieve greatness again, it must welcome problems.
I saw Venturi’s ideas in completion in one of my impromptu happenings, I went on a guided night tour of the Jack the Ripper crimes. I arrived via train to Whitechapel and noticed immediately the mixture of history and modern life. There were old pubs advertising ghosts of Jack the Ripper victims and new Burger Kings selling fast food to the working class. This combination embodied the exact ways in which an urban space should be constructed and planned to respond to the wants of program. I see the wants of program as the needs of the locale, the program is dictated by the modern human as an architecture without vitality is dead.
The uncertainties dwell in the controversy of removing any part of history to make way for new. The council block flats which were built in the 1950s, lack any sort of complexity in form or program. However, there was complexity in the lives and stories that occupied those apartments though they are no longer living and breathing entities, just memories of the past. The question becomes, is it better to amend the building or start again?
The chaotic order of Whitechapel is made beautiful and complex within its historical contradictions. One of the most famous locations of a Jack the Ripper murder was the Truman Brewery. The Brewery, a representation of the dark history of crime within London was transformed into a new space, The Old Truman Brewery, a space for revolutionary arts and media. In a place of death and crime, a place of creation and innovation was placed. A concept diverse and conflicting in one of the most unimaginable ways. While the building was renovated, it appears in a hybrid of new and old, a complexity and contradiction. The roof frame was all open exposing the materiality, it became the structure and mechanical equipment shown through the building. Some of the restaurant spaces in the building are renovated with more futuristic approaches, it is the vitality of the modern city taking hold of history.
These complexities in contradictions are not just about the building as an entity, they are not just about a single architect, his goals, or his ambitions, they are not frivolous detail without intent. I saw commodity, firmness, and delight in the old, the new, and the old-new. I experienced the city in Victorian London, I experienced the city in modern times, and I experienced the modernized history of the space which called to a new and previously unknown experience. Complexity is not dependent on the destruction of what is bland and simple, it can be the dramatic retelling of a building as a story. The complexity of the story, the function and expression. I welcomed the problems when I went to London and I saw the broader scopes of city planning through Complexity and Contradiction.
The Theory of Sarah 
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