Reyner Banham examined the built environment of Los Angeles in a way no architectural historian before him had done, looking with fresh eyes at its manifestations of popular taste and industrial ingenuity, as well as its more traditional modes of residential and commercial building. His construct of 'four ecologies' examined the ways Angelenos relate to the beach, the freeways, the flatlands, and the foothills. Banham delighted in this mobile city and identified it as an exemplar of the posturban future. In a spectacular new foreword, architect and scholar Joe Day explores how the structure of Los Angeles, the concept of 'ecology', and the relevance of Banham's ideas have changed over the past thirty-five years.
List of Illustrations
Foreword to the 2009 Edition
Foreword to the 2000 Edition
Views of Los Angeles
1. In the Rear-view Mirror
2. Ecology I: Surfurbia
3· Architecture I: Exotic Pioneers
4· The Transportation Palimpsest
5. Ecology II: Foothills
6. Architecture II: Fantastic
7· The Art of the Enclave
8. Ecology III: The Plains of Id
9· Architecture III: The Exiles
10. A Note on Downtown . ..
11. Ecology IV: Autopia
12. Architecture IV: The Style that Nearly. . .
13. An Ecology for Architecture
Acknowledgments
Towards a Drive-in Bibliography
Index