Los Angeles: Part II

RESPONDING TO REYNER BANHAM: LOS ANGELES (FORWARD, PP. 77-141)

Given the way the city has sprung up almost uniformly within the LA Basin, and the fantastical nature that comprises large parts of both its culture and component architecture, seemingly the best metaphor to describe the space is that of an enormous mushroom emerging on the shores of Southern California.

In many ways the designs and contours situated around specific elements of geography and topography in Los Angeles resonate because of the similar situations at play in Salt Lake. One central difference is the reorientation of affluence in Salt Lake on the east side benches, a trend that Banham doesn’t exist in many major cities. What is absolutely analogous between the two locations however is the fact that the higher the ground built on, the higher the income. Driving along the I-215 corridor that runs near the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains the luxury homes of Olympus Cove and upper Millcreek pattern the landscape, offering a commanding God’s eye view of the sprawling Salt Lake Valley below. And just as in Los Angeles, the foundations of these homes rest on an area of deep geological turbulence.

But where Los Angeles is wholly unique (not only from Salt Lake, but really anywhere aside from maybe Los Vegas) is in the cultural forces at work that have created an area for fantastic architecture to emerge. Banham credits this to the presence of Hollywood and a film industry that has not only centralized creative talent, but also the technical skill and resources necessary to execute fantastic design. Among the most synonymous attributes of Southern California is the manufactured world of Disneyland, which is fantastic architecture and artifice in dynamic motion. But the experiences offered by the fantastical, Disney experience may have a darker side, in effect creating a world of perpetual Disney-fication in which human beings relationship to outside cultures and physical environments are only understood through the highly mobile, manufactured, sanitized world of simulacra. In world of caricature manufactured living a valid argument becomes how one relates to the natural world, and in turn builds an ethic of care for such places. This is seemingly one of the great questions (and potential risks) bound in the surreal and fantastic that swirls around Los Angeles (and the greater Southern California area).

But while the fantastical elements of Los Angeles invite potential criticism they are critical as a component piece in understanding how the city of Los Angeles has emerged in whole. As Banham points out, Los Angeles is remarkable in its planning for a variety of reasons, including the fact that out of the (often competing) visions and goals of numerous agents (commercial, public, private, industrial) something like a unified whole has emerged. In this way Los Angeles (and “places” in general) is driven by its own internal logic, arrived at with the greater forces of social and cultural identity and change shaping it. Planning emerges on almost an organic level in Los Angeles, periodically fantastical in its shape and design, not completely unlike a giant mushroom sprouting up along the Pacific Coast of Southern California.