By Robert Venturi

This award-winning 'gentle manifesto' for a 'non-straightforward architecture' argues against the purist forms and tenets of orthodox modernism, and for an embrace of multiple and conflicting ideas that produce a more vital approach to built design. Using examples ranging from Michelangelo’s unfinished sculptures to designs by Edwin Lutyens, Alvar Aalto, vernacular sources, and Venturi’s own work, the book, which has been translated into 18 languages since it was first published, makes a case for 'the difficult whole.'