Monday, October 22, 2007

Bob and Denise Update Themselves

When Robert Venturi came to Crown Hall at IIT a couple of years ago to talk of Mies and the importance of signs and symbols, I noticed that the Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates website, while drawing on that emphasis with a day-glo colored, icon rich design, offered up a timeline of the firm's work, complete with stacking sound effects. that seemed to have halted after the year 2000.
Last week I received an email announcing a new update, and a revised timeline that includes such current projects as Lehigh Valley Hospital - Cedar Crest, and Temple Beth El in Sunbury, Pennsylvania. The bright, puppy-dog friendly design, as idiosyncratic as Venturi and Scott Brown themselves, meshes futurist and retro - there's even scrolling text in the status bar. It has a distinctive, easy-to-navigate look-and-feel that conveys a great deal of information in an engaging, almost home-spun package, and appears to accomplish it without a stitch of Flash. Check it out for yourself here.

1 comment:

Scott said...

I like the website, too... but most of the content part of the site is Flash-based. At least they were smart and made the menu and links with standard HTML, so different pages could get linked to.
(Note: turn off your speakers if you're headed to the List)