Best Products Co., Inc. Panels (Primary Title)
Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates, American, founded 1958 (Artist)
Architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown achieved acclaim for their reaction against Modernism’s “less is more” mantra, offering instead the notion that “less is a bore.” In 1978 Best Products, the catalog showroom retail chain founded by VMFA benefactors Sydney and Frances Lewis, commissioned Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates to design the façade of its showroom in Langhorne, Pennsylvania. These panels come from the Langhorne building.
Inspired by the wallpaper in their own bedroom, the architects created a pattern of large red and white flowers across panels of porcelain steel. The fact that they used vernacular decoration as a source and covered only the front and side of the building reflects their interest in what they called “decorated sheds”— mundane structures where large-scale decoration conveys the building’s purpose or character.
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