architecture, design & graphics

Venturi Facade, Rauch, Brown, and Venturi

By the early 1970s, Venturi and Rauch had embraced the iconography of strip malls and suburban sprawl, making pop art out of the unremarkable materials of the big-box store—as evident in this facade of Warholesque flower-print panels for the Best Products showroom in Langhorne, Pennsylvania. To give the rectangular catalog showroom presence in an area of vast parking lots, the architects developed a decorative facade of porcelain steel panels decorated with large red and white flowers.

Completed in 1979 and operated for over two decades, the retail showroom eventually became vacant. In 2005, the structure was converted to offices. With the assistance of Venturi’s firm of Venturi, Scott Brown, and Associates, the panels were dismantled from the facade and offered to selected museums.

Architecture, Design & Graphics