Venturi's first important project to be built was his mother's house, the Vanna Venturi House of 1961-1964. Disarmingly simple after the spatial antics of later Modernism and this design in based on a symbolic conception rather than purely spatially abstract.
It is centered on the idea of the chimney,the hearth, from which you can feel the space is being pulled. The space is distended from that hearth as the mass of the chimney rises up to split the house. And the whole house is risng and being split through the middle.
"The architect stresses that 'The house is big as well as little, by which I mean that it this is a little house with big scale. Outside, the manifestations of big scale are the main elements, which are bing and few in number and central or symmetrical in position, as well as the simplicity and consistency of the form and silhouette of the whole. The main reason fot the large scale is to counterbalance the complexity. Complexity in combination with scale in small buildings means busyness. Like the other organized complexities here, the big scale in the small building achieves tension rather than nervousness...' "
-Stanislaus von Moos. Venturi, Rauch & Scott Brown: Buildings and Projects. pg244-246
