Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies by Reyner Banham
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
In this stunning work, Reyner Banham breaks out and challenges many of the norms of his time for urban development and how architecture should be considered. The work isn’t academic, because it doesn’t examine other people’s positions, but it does wax poetic about how great Los Angeles is.
When I combined reading this book with his video, “Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles” you get a very different but complementary message. The point of this book was to convince others, his professional peers, that Los Angeles was worth considering. He wants to showcase how this vibrant and oddly made city, the product of its short history and global world economy expansion allows for the sense of freedom and wonderment that LA embodies. His video was much in the same way about the same thing — although through his emphasis of lifestyle I got a more complete picture.
Los Angeles was also talked about by Baudrillard in his book America, as the example of hyperreality. LA got its hyperreality because it was starred in films that were shot here (because of the weather, and the open space). These films attracted stars to live here, and so we get the superficial image of wealth and status, where LA was the place to make it. From there, you have Banham’s observation that LA was a place where anything could happen, architecturally or culturally.
In this way, Banham is, in a synecdoche-analogous way, celebrating capitalism’s fruit as he celebrates LA and explores the social, economic and political pressures that made LA… it’s kind of telling too, that in the film he says how Watts improved (as if to dismiss LA’s inclusion in the history of racial prejudice, yes yes there are poor people, but they get watts towers)… and how in the book I am reviewing, he doesn’t even mention racial tension at all, except in passing. Obviously the fruits, and the technological mastery that is LA should be cherished, enjoyed, although whoever paid for these fruits to be extracted… should not be given much thought at all.
While this definitely scars the book, as Banham did write it to direct us to how LA got to be the way it is. I am thankful for his sections on its local history, and historical politics (which has greed and corruption)… but Banham probably didn’t think so far as to analyze the cultural milieu of Los Angeles and ITS origins… which while arguably just as important as the physicality of Los Angeles, is just out of Banham’s professional range, as he teaches Architecture, he isn’t a philosopher. I do appreciate his insights, however. The range of research involved, travel, the pictures in the book, and his witty and engaging writing make this book easier to read, than it actually may sound. Given the domain of the book, it actually is quite good — and living in Los Angeles — I do note that some of his observations (physical and cultural) are dated.
However, if ecology were to be true to the sense of the word (rather than simply a metaphor he employs to cluster architectural infrastructures), Banham should have talked about the underpinnings of capitalism, its exploitation and the people who suffered, as much as he waxes about the fruits of capitalism as expressed in Los Angeles.
