Word: reyner
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...marble foyers and 100 Sheetrock offices, their eggbox planning, insipid detail and graceless proportions. The International Style expended itself in these shallows, not in its masterpieces. But what is the alternative? Not the culture of Vegas casinos and duck-shaped roadhouses beloved of Pop architectural theorists like Reyner Banham and Robert Venturi; trash may be language, but it remains trash. The desire for an architecture that is grand, exemplary, responsive and practical still exists. And general expectations of such an architecture have to a large extent converged on Kahn...
Acerb and iconoclastic, London's Reyner Banham occupies a special niche among critics of the man-made environment. He inspects his chosen topic -usually architecture or mass culture or both-with unblinkered eyes. Then he devastates all conventional wisdom about it. His new book, Los Angeles (Harper & Row; $6.95), is no exception. Spurning the popular pastime of condemning Los Angeles as an eyesore of shallow pretensions, Banham raises a rare intellectual voice in its favor. "Los Angeles does not get the attention it deserves," he writes. "It gets attention, but it's the attention Sodom and Gomorrah received...
...bubbles is all but irresistible. Twice since 1968, would-be deflators have pierced Harvard's bubble−but an alarm system brought maintenance crews on the double. Actually, a certain amount of leakage is desirable. "Air-supported buildings must leak," explains English Architecture Critic Reyner Banham. "They are living things. They must breathe." If they are not allowed to breathe, strange things happen: the blowers that constantly pump air into the enclosed space cause pressure to build up, and the building begins to screech, pull and tug. To those within the bubble, says Banham, "it's like being...