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Virginia Tech

Boredom's Metamorphosis: Robert Venturi and Saul Steinberg

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

My dissertation investigates questions of boredom and architecture in the middle decades of the twentieth century through the work of two figures: the American-Italian architect Robert Venturi (b. 1925) and the Romanian-born American architect and artist Saul Steinberg (1914-1999). The topic of boredom in architecture, and specifically within this timeframe, has been largely ignored in architectural history, theory, and criticism where, with the exception of a few articles, there is no consistent body of scholarship on this issue. Looming large in the sterile iterations of various –isms, boredom remains critical in contemporary architectural practice as the production and obsolescence of images becomes ever faster with new technologies. Quickly saturated with information presented in fleeting displays that are easy to produce, easy to delete, and easy to consume, as soon as our expectation for novelty and change fails to satisfy us, we fall back into the loop of boredom. While boredom as the dissociation of person from place has raised architects' interest especially during the middle decades of the twentieth century, there is no significant scholarship on this topic. In this context, my research looks at the work of two architects who go beyond the attractive rhetoric of boredom and explore its potential as both a critical and a generative tool.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
PHD
Level thesis:degree_level
doctoral
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Architecture and Design Research
Department dc:contributor.department
Architecture
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
2018

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Mihalache, Andreea Margareta
Chair dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Emmons, Paul F.
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Feuerstein, Marcia F.
  • Holt, Jaan
  • Kulper, Amy Catania

Subjects

dc:subject × 5

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
vt_gsexam:15631
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/96190

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-24
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Mihalache, Andreea Margareta. Boredom's Metamorphosis: Robert Venturi and Saul Steinberg. doctoral thesis, Virginia Tech, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/96190