Peter Reyner Banham was a seminal architectural critic and theorist, renowned for his incisive examination of modernism and its relationship with the machine age. His writings explored how formal aspirations often shaped the functional realities of built structures. Banham was also a pioneer in understanding urban landscapes, notably categorizing Los Angeles into four distinct ecological models to reveal its unique architectural cultures. His critical thinking and foresight positioned him as a conscience of post-war British architecture, as he evolved from utopian ideals to a deeper contemplation of the post-industrial future.
Born and trained in England and a US resident starting in 1976, Reyner Banham wrote incisively about American and European buildings and culture. This title presents a chronological cross-section of essays, polemics, and reviews drawn from more than three decades of Banham's writings.
First published in 1960, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age has become required reading in numerous courses on the history of modern architecture and is widely regarded as one of the definitive books on the modern movement. It has influenced a generation of students and critics interested in the formation of attitudes, themes, and forms which were characteristic of artists and architects working primarily in Europe between 1900 and 1930 under the compulsion of new technological developments in the first machine age.
The Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of Ed Ruscha is a six-volume series of books co-published by Steidl and Gagosian Gallery. This is the second volume, which contains entries on 178 paintings completed between 1971 and 1982--from the artist's crisis at the onset of the 70s, when he “quits painting pictures,” to his first major museum retrospective, which opened in March 1982 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The catalogue includes a comprehensive exhibition history, bibliography and biographical chronology, as well as a preface by the editor Robert Dean, an essay by UCLA film historian Peter Wollen examining Ruscha's use of color as it relates to his use of language, and an essay by the late Reyner Banham.Each volume of the catalogue, designed by Bruce Mau, has a stitched binding and a cloth cover with silver-colored embossing protected by an embossed slipcase. Specifications for subsequent volumes are the same.
The Architecture of Four Ecologies
Reyner Banham examined the built environment of Los Angeles in a way no architectural historian before him had done, looking with fresh eyes at its manifestations of popular taste and industrial ingenuity, as well as its more traditional modes of residential and commercial building. His construct of "four ecologies" examined the ways Angelenos relate to the beach, the freeways, the flatlands, and the foothills. Banham delighted in this mobile city and identified it as an exemplar of the posturban future.
This classic work explores a pivotal architectural movement that has influenced not only architects but also fantasists and filmmakers. It provides critical insights into the evolution of architectural design and its cultural impact, making it a significant resource for those interested in architectural history and theory. The reprint offers a fresh opportunity to engage with its timeless themes and ideas.
