Why Doesn’t He Marry It?: In 1971’s Los Angeles: The Architecture…
In 1971’s Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, Reyner Banham became the first architectural critic to defend Los Angeles like he really meant it. Banham was a Brit who came to teach at USC in the 1960s, and he famously wrote, “I learned to drive to read Los Angeles in the original.” (It’s like people learning Italian to read Dante in the original.) Richard Rayner writes in the Los Angeles Times that, in Los Angeles, Banham praised “not only the émigré modernist designs of its architect pioneers like Rudolph Schindler and Richard Neutra but also its busy vernacular: gas stations, surfboards, muscle cars and freeways.” The book is available now in a new edition from the University of California Press, with a forward by Los Angeles architect and Southern California Institute of Architecture profressor Joe Day, who was interviewed recently about the book for the Palisadian-Post. If that’s not enough Banham to keep you pleased, you can watch the related documentary Reyner Banham Likes Los Angeles on Google Videos or take an Esotouric tour of some of the places Banham wrote about [via GraphicHug]. [Photo via Janette Ray Rare and Out of Print Books] [LA Times]
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