» An Englishman in Los Angeles
Previously on IRB: Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles
Architectural critic Reyner Banham came to L.A. from England in the late 1960s and liked what he saw.
Banham came from abroad, but he came, not to escape something, not to try to reinvent himself or to sneer at us. He came to celebrate, and, in 1971, this bucked a 40-year trend in which Los Angeles had been cast as a schlock dystopia. Banham declared (outrageously, many said at the time) that L.A. was a great city, praising not only the émigré modernist designs of its architect pioneers like Rudolph Schindler and Richard Neutra but also its busy vernacular: gas stations, surfboards, muscle cars and freeways.His landmark book about L.A., Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, has just been reissued in a new edition from University of California Press.
Previously on IRB: Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles
