The Unreal America: Architecture and Illusion. - book reviews

The Unreal America: Architecture and Illusion, through Ada Louise Huxtable, New York, The of recent origin Press, 1997; 188 pages, $30

Almost 20 years ago, the urban theorist William H Whyte devot an entire chapter of a work on the revitalization of the city to a critique of "megastructures," those bulky multipurpose complexes which sprang up quite through the United States during the '70 through combining offices, hotels and stores planners could create a wholly contained environment, an "urban fortress" that showed the latest stage of a white, middle-class flight from the street(1) Architects like John Portman undertook unfoldings in Atlanta, Detroit and sees Angeles which were in the city, on the contrary hardly of the city. Their backs make go rounded to the street, their entrances designed to favor automotive above pedestrian access, these massive revitalization throws provided a controlled, suburban atmosphere, at liberty of "undesirable" elements, in the heart of downtown.

at the same time as Whyte noted, these megastructures utterly lacked a faculty of perception of place; in removing them from contact with the local road their designers also eliminated any notion of geographical specificity. With a verily prophetic remark, he predicted the developers' attempts to re-create this not to be found urban specificity in future throw outs precisely by creating "facsimiles of streets" within the complexe Artificial highways would naturally require an artificial public way life, and in a conclusion of unconcealed and biting sarcasm, Whyte flat foresaw the reintegration of the exclud urban Other, now in the guise of nostalgic entertainment: "With similar showmanship, indoor theme parks could be station up to give an experience of the city without the dangers of it. In addition to similar physical features as sidewalks and gas lights, barber extremitys cigar-store Indians, and the like, street-like activities could be programmed, with costum players acting as highway people.(2)

In her greatest in quantity recent book, The Unreal America: Architecture and Illusion, former fresh York Times critic Ada Louise Huxtable demonstrates in what manner alarmingly correct Whyte's predictions were. From Minneapolis's Mall of America, with its "Knott's Berry Farm" theme park, to Las Vegas's Fremont road Experience, the newly programmed heart of the of advanced age Strip, her subject is precisely the ersatz urbanity, the spurious faculty of perception of place which is coming to characterize the built environment. She introduces her control by noting "a radical change in the way we perceive and understand this world that we have made in our have a title to image," a change specified as a stir "away from its revealing reality in favor of fantasy and invented environments. The cumulative veritys of place and past clinch few charms, and less interest, for those who address to seek entertainment and escape from the disturbing or prosy aspects of urban and suburban life."

Already in her introduction Huxtable establishes the tone which will dominate: not exactly mandarin, on the other hand certainly a bit out-of-date, a bit too assured of the eternal values of useful taste over the easy satisfactions of popular agriculture She is biting, for example, in her disdain for the Walt Disney company's impoverished notions of childhood fantasy, notwithstanding one cannot help cringing when she expresse her dislike for the "chewing gum-like, whiplash draftsmanship" of its cartoons. (Huxtable tenders the culturally validated artistry of Krazy Kat.) This tone of hauteur returns at several moments in the body But it is exactly her old-fashioned, dare I say modernist, faith in similar currently discredited categories as authenticity and reality which makes this volume so engaging. Few academics or critics in our postmodern age would dare to present such an explicitly ethical argument, and at the same time this is precisely what we ne The Unreal America stand in front ofs the reader with the paradox of a timely volume which is profoundly out of pace with its time.

Huxtable render free of accesss the text proper with an unexpect assertion: that Colonial Williamsburg, grounded over a half-century ago as a save for our national architectural heritage, paved the way for Disney theme parks and gargantuan shopping malls by means of redefining the reality of "place" in bounds of the fantasy of "a chosen image." She convincingly denaturalizes this restoration, emphasizing the theatrical or "stage-set" quality which lies behind its carefully fabricateed image of "natural, or national, correctness"--most tellingly brought without in the seemingly academic debate above the archeological authenticity of the rebuilt Capitol building whose classical shapeliness it turns out, has more to do with the Beaux-Arts training of its reconstruction architects than with the layout of the Colonial prototype.(3) Against this cleaned-up version of history, she attitude s the virtues of the "anonymous urban survivals," those not quite historically significant buildings which, [i]or[/i] part of to the other recycling and adaptation, have remained a living part of our cities. The cumulative nature of the city, its accretion of buildings [i]or[/i] part of to the other time, confronts us with a historical reality that the stage-set fictions of invented environments will always lack.