While Venturi and Scott Brown were still signing books after the VSBA symposium at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, I met Steven Izenour for the first and last time. Probably not too many others present, including myself, knew that Izenour was going to celebrate his sixty-first birthday just two days hence. And certainly no one there knew that Izenour would die of a heart attack a month and a week later. |
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Venturi and Rauch, Princeton Memorial Park Tower (Hightstown, New Jersey, 1966, project) |
The tower is a sign to be seen from the expressway yet to be interesting from close up. Its precedents are the campanile and the commercial sign by the highway. From the highway you see the bold silhouette of the concrete cylinder, and through the openings in the cylinder you see a structural diagonal diaphragm with an appliqué of black and white marble whose op-scaled stripes are like those of the tower at Siena. Inscribed in concrete on the back of the diaphragm sloping toward the viewer is the Twenty-third Psalm, which is seen through a sheet of water. At night the tower is lighted internally to be read from a distance and it becomes a base for a tall beacon of light.
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And finally Steven Izenour, who is our co-worker, co-author, and sine qua non.
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Quondam © 2002.02.04 |