Ehrenzweig refers to the human need for ambiguous, open-ended situations to the multiple fields of arts, and even Arnheim - a gestalt psychologist stressing closure as an aesthetic virtue - claims the need for a minimum of complexity in visual fields. Many writers and artists have indeed enhanced the need for ambiguity - Hemingway, Tolstoy, Baudelaire, Blake or da Vinci - as a way of triggering real attachment on the beholder.
On the other hand, though, contemporary architecture and urban design increasingly seek for order and clarity - being often judged as forms of sensory deprivation or monotony. Venturi's thoughts evolved around this idea, suggesting a return to the basic premises of vernacular architecture - which, he claimed, contributed to more interesting visual fields. The problem is basically that of how complexity can be achieved in design, particularly when something as varied, intricate, all-inclusive as the city is treated as a design problem, that is, as a "work of art".
This is possibly the starting point of the bewilderment - the two ideas are mistakenly mixed, and too often. Architecture does not have to be a complex work of art to be appreciated; it needs to be a clear, transparent base from which the observer can see the world - inside and out - and appreciate the real complexity and strangeness of art or - that which Baudelaire or Hemingway refer to in their writings - the real complexity of human relations or our inner selves.
At the same time, the overall idea of strangeness does not refer to that which is completely abnormal. It refers to that which is almost pristine, almost perfect, almost too simple and clear, but which yet hides some sort of enigma or mystery; recognizable, and yet hard to be deciphered at a quick glance.
But architecture - let it be simple. Let it be, as per Brancusi's words, complexity resolved.
about strangeness
