Los Angeles (the Architecture Of Four Ecologies)

By (author) Reyner Banham; By (author) Banham, Reyner; Foreword by Day, Joe
Short description/annotation
Examines the built environment of Los Angeles, looking at its manifestations of popular taste and industrial ingenuity, as well as its traditional modes of residential and commercial building. This title also examines ''four ecologies'' in the ways Angelenos relate to the beach, the freeways, the flatlands, and the foothills.
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 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.
Table of contents
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
Review quote
"In one volume [Banham] does the near-impossible: He makes us see this fragmented city [of Los Angeles] as a breathing whole." -- Ariel Swartley Los Angeles Magazine "Still as penetrating now as when Banham completed his observations on the city in 1971." La Observed "Banham wrote like a blissed-out lover, surrendering to his feelings of derangement and wonder while keeping his eyes wide-open." Los Angeles Times "Banham''s book has remained au courant." Palisadian Post
Biographical note
Reyner Banham (1922-1988) was Sheldon H. Solow Professor of the History of Architecture at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Joe Day leads deegan day design llc and serves on the design faculty at the Southern California Institute of Architecture.