A critic writes : essays by Reyner Banham

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A critic writes : essays by Reyner Banham

selected by Mary Banham ... [et al.] ; foreword by Peter Hall

(A centennial book)

University of California Press, 1999

  • pbk.

Available at  / 2 libraries

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Note

Includes bibliographical references and index

"Published with the assistance of a grant from teh Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts" -- t.p. verso

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Few twentieth-century writers on architecture and design have enjoyed the renown of Reyner Banham. Born and trained in England and a U.S. resident starting in 1976, Banham wrote incisively about American and European buildings and culture. Now readers can enjoy a chronological cross-section of essays, polemics, and reviews drawn from more than three decades of Banham's writings. The volume, which includes discussions of Italian Futurism, Adolf Loos, Paul Scheerbart, and the Bauhaus as well as explorations of contemporary architecture by Frank Gehry, James Stirling, and Norman Foster, conveys the full range of Banham's belief in industrial and technological development as the motor of architectural evolution. Banham's interests and passions ranged from architecture and the culture of pop art to urban and industrial design. In brilliant analyses of automobile styling, mobile homes, science fiction films, and the American predilection for gadgets, he anticipated many of the preoccupations of contemporary cultural studies. Los Angeles, the city that Banham commemorated in a book and a film, receives extensive attention in essays on the Santa Monica Pier, the Getty Museum, Forest Lawn cemetery, and the ubiquitous freeway system. Eminently readable, provocative, and entertaining, this book is certain to consolidate Banham's reputation among architects and students of contemporary culture. For those acquainted with his writing, it offers welcome surprises as well as familiar delights. For those encountering Banham for the first time, it comprises the perfect introduction.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Foreword by Peter Hall 1950s 1. Vehicles of Desire 2. The New Brutalism 3. Ornament and Crime: The Decisive Contribution of Adolf Loos 4. Ungrab That Gondola 5. Machine Aesthetes 6. Unesco House 7. The Glass Paradise 8. Primitives of a Mechanized Art The 1960s 9. Stocktaking 10. Alienation of Parts 11. Design by Choice 12. Carbonorific 13. Big Doug, Small Piece 14. Old Number One 15. Kent and Capability The Dymaxicrat 17. The Style for the Job 18. How I Learnt to Live with the Norwich Union 19. People's Palaces 20. The Great Gizmo 21. Aviary, London Zoological Gardens 22. Unlovable at Any Speed 23. Roadscape with Rusting Nails 24. History Faculty, Cambridge 25. The Wilderness Years of Frank Lloyd Wright The 1970s 26. Power of Trent and Aire 27. The Crisp at the Crossroads 28. The Historian on the Pier 29. The Master Builders 30. Rank Values 31. Paleface Trash 32. Power Plank 33. Iron Bridge Embalmed 34. Sundae Painters 35. Bricologues a Ia Lanterne 36. Lair of the Looter 37. Valley of the Dams 38. Grass Above, Glass Around 39. Summa Galactica 40. Pevsner's Progress 41. Taking It With You 42. Hotel Deja-quoi? 43. Valentino: Simply Filed Away The 1980s 44. The Haunted Highway 45. Dead on the Fault 46. 0, Bright Star ... 47. Stirling Escapes the Hobbits 48. Fiat: The Phantom of Order 49. Modern Monuments 50. Building Inside Out 51. In the Neighborhood of Art On the Wings of Wonder 53. Actual Monuments 54. A Black Box: The Secret Profession of Architecture Bibliography Index

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