- Paperback: 272 pages
- Publisher: University of California Press; New edition edition (16 May 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0520219244
- ISBN-13: 978-0520219243
- Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 14.2 x 1.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,310,654 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"A light-hearted and affectionate tribute to Los Angeles....Banham sees not the burnt, lunar landscape of the fiction writers, but a benign littoral where sea, mountains, valleys, and plain form a natural environment that charms as well as challenges its inhabitants. To the historian of architecture, it is the cityscape itself that is most fascinating, providing him with the materials of his strongest attack on the literary conventions about Los Angeles." - Francis Carney, New York Review of Books "The true language of Los Angeles is the language of movement, says Banham. 'So...I learned to drive in order to read Los Angeles in the original.'...A generous and exhilarating joyride." - Roger Jellinek, The New York Times "Banham, with his nose for architectural news, was bound to celebrate Los Angeles: it is just his cup of Coca-Cola. The celebration is enjoyable, often shrewd, sometimes superficial and diffuse, as travellers' tales are. This city 'seventy miles square but rarely seventy years deep' defies the limitations of conventional architectural history, the author says, forcing him to describe its topographical and historical context too." - Times Literary Supplement"
Product Description
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 flat-lands, and the foothills. Banham delighted in this mobile city and identified it as an exemplar of the posturban future.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Arrived in good time. Excellent copy of the book. Arrived in mint condition. I was very pleased with this purchase.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
8 reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
LA Re-visited
14 July 2006
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Even though Banham's book was written in the early '70's, it remains a cogent view of a metropolis that has changed yet remained the same. It is a place, yes a real place, that is defined by geography and the various cultures of its inhabitants to a unique degree. Architecture is but a backdrop to Banham's larger point about the inter-relationship of people to the natural and built environments. The perspective of 35 years only sharpens the observations made by the insightful author.
18 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Getting to know LA from the ground up
18 July 1998
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Reyner Banham's writing is intelligent and entertaining. He has taken LA to heart and reveals how its "four ecologies" have affected its contemporary appearance and character. You'll not only learn how LA's architecture came to be as it is, but learn a great deal about the history and personality of the city as well. I read this book to get to know LA better. I couldn't have picked a better one.
13 of 18 people found the following review helpful
When the Going Was Good
18 July 2008
Format:Paperback
Los Angeles. There were a few years there when Los Angles was the center of the world. 1965-1985, give or take a few years. Oh yes, even the Brits were raving. David Hockney had declared LA the best place to paint ("Splash") and Reyner Banham declared LA the city of tomorrow. Things were cooking and I was there. Then things started to go wrong. Spielberg and the boys from USC took over Hollywood and turned the city from a culture center into an amusement park. The pollution started to get too dangerous to laugh at. The gangs took over much of the fringe. There was Rodney King, O.J., riots, earthquakes, fires, gang warfare. All in all, the city was destroyed. Who knows what Banham might make of the place now. This is a great little book.
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