Vincent Scully in the context of University of Miami

Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture is a book by the American architect Robert Venturi. It was first published in 1966 by Museum of Modern Art in New York City and has since been translated into 16 languages, and is considered one of the most important works of architectural literature. Architectural historian Vincent Scully has singled it out as "probably the most important text on architecture since Le Corbusier's Toward an Architecture in 1923".

Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture marks a turning point in American architecture and architectural theory. In the early 1980s, Philip Johnson declared, with extravagant insouciance: "Venturi is the most important architect in the world today... He revolutionized architecture with Complexity and Contradiction in the 1960s. He freed us; he untied the chains with one stroke."

The Vanna Venturi House, one of the first prominent works of the postmodern architecture movement, is located in the neighborhood of Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was designed by architect Robert Venturi for his mother, Vanna Venturi, and built between 1962 and 1964.

The five-room house stands only about 30 feet (9 m) tall, but has a monumental front facade, an effect achieved by intentionally manipulating the architectural elements that indicate a building's scale. Elements such as a non-structural applique arch and "hole in the wall" windows were an open challenge to Modernist orthodoxy, as described in Venturi's 1966 book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture .Architectural historian Vincent Scully called it "the biggest small building of the second half of the twentieth century."