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REYNER BANHAM REYNERREYNER BANHAM the MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England REYNER BANHAM REYNERREYNER BANHAM The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England Historian of the Immediate Future Immediate the of Historian REYNER BANHAM REYNER REYNER BANHAM Historian of the Immediate Future Nigel Whiteley © 2002 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was set in Frutiger by Graphic Composition, Inc. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Whiteley, Nigel. Reyner Banham: historian of the immediate future / Nigel Whiteley. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-262-23216-2 (hc.: alk. paper) 1. Banham, Reyner—Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. NA2599.8.B36 W48 2002 720'.92—dc21 2001030605 To my father, Eric, and the memory of my mother, Peggy, with much love and gratitude CONTENTSCONTENTS viii List of Illustrations xii Preface xviii Acknowledgments 2 Introduction 30 1 The Mechanical Sensibility The First Machine Age Revised 80 2 Popular Desires and Rough Poetry The Independent Group, New Brutalism, and Architecture Autre 140 3 Science for Kicks An Architecture of Technology for the Second Machine Age 186 4 The Expanded Field Fit Environments for Human Activities 244 5 Late or Post? Banham’s Modernist Values 308 6 Expendable Icons and Softer Hardware Banham’s Design Criticism 362 Conclusion Changing His Mind or Having It Both Ways? 412 Notes 476 Bibliography 480 Index ILLUSTRATIONSILLUSTRATIONS ILLUSTRATIONS 5 Reyner Banham, working-class intellectual, early 1960s 6 Reyner Banham, the pop professor, early 1970s 7 Reyner Banham, the cowboy, 1980s 14 Festival of Britain litter bin, 1951 19 “Neo-Liberty,” Architectural Review, 1959 41 Bruno Taut, Glass Industry Pavilion, Cologne, 1914 43 Erich Mendelsohn, Steinberg-Hermann factory, 1921–1923 49 Antonio Sant’Elia, study for The New City, 1914 60 Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye, Poissy-sur-Seine, 1928–1930 69 Ford Motor Company exhibit, New York World’s Fair, 1939 72 Rudolf Schindler, Schindler/Chase house, Los Angeles, 1921 76 Albert Kahn and Edward Grey, Ford Old Shop, 1908 76 Ernest L. Ransome, United Shoe Machinery plant, 1903–1906 77 Giacomo Matté-Trucco et al., Fiat factory, Turin, 1914–1926 87 “Parallel of Life and Art,” ICA, London, 1953 88 “Man, Machine and Motion,” Newcastle, 1955 91 Cadillac, early 1950s 114 “This Is Tomorrow,” Hamilton/McHale/Voelcker exhibit, 1956 114 Richard Hamilton, “Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing?,” 1956 115 “This Is Tomorrow,” Alloway/del Renzio/Holroyd exhibit, 1956 115 “This Is Tomorrow,” Paolozzi/Henderson/the Smithsons, 1956 119 Jackson Pollock, Yellow Islands, 1952 120 Jean Dubuffet, Le Metafisyx, 1950 121 Eduardo Paolozzi, Bunk, 1952 124 Alison and Peter Smithson, Hunstanton School, 1950–1954 129 “The New Brutalism,” Architectural Review, 1955 133 Alison and Peter Smithson, the Economist Building, 1959–1964 136 Alison and Peter Smithson, House of the Future, 1956 149 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Berlin Museum, 1962–1968 152 CLASP school, Milan Triennale, 1960 ix ILLUSTRATIONS 153 Charles Eames, Case Study House, Los Angeles, 1949 158 Buckminster Fuller, Dymaxion House, 1927–1929 172 Archigram, expendability collage from Archigram 3, 1963 173 Archigram, Plug-in City, 1964 173 Archigram, Amazing Archigram 4, 1964 181 Pop fashions, mid-1960s 181 Disposable paper furniture, mid-1960s 191 Banham’s “unhouse,” 1965 192 Louis Kahn, Richards Medical Research Center, 1957–1961 195 Add-on air-conditioning unit 198 Frank Lloyd Wright, Larkin Building, Buffalo, 1906 205 Philip Johnson, house at New Canaan, Conn., 1950 207 Victor Lundy, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission building, 1950s 209 Banham’s “standard-of-living package,” 1965 213 “Clip-on” outboard motor 213 Cedric Price, Fun Palace, 1961–1967 216 Archigram, “Control and Choice,” 1966–1967 218 Late 1960s inflatables 221 Archigram, Instant City, 1969 223 Las Vegas signs 226 Los Angeles 1960s postcard 230 Albert C. Martin and Associates, Water and Power Building 231 Robert Stacy-Judd, Aztec Hotel, Monrovia, Los Angeles, 1925 232 Simon Rodia, Watts Towers, Los Angeles, 1921–1954 235 Surfboards, mid-1960s 235 Intersection of Santa Monica and San Diego freeways 250 James Stirling and James Gowan, Engineering Faculty, Leicester University, 1964 255 James Stirling, History Faculty, Cambridge University, 1968 272 Ponderosa Steakhouse, Buffalo, New York, mid-1970s 277 Frank O. Gehry, Gehry House, Santa Monica, 1977–1979 x ILLUSTRATIONS 277 Frank O. Gehry, Loyola Marymount Law School, 1978–1984 279 James Stirling and Michael Wilford, Staatsgalerie, 1977–1984 282 Strada Novissima, Venice Biennale, 1980 285 Megastructures at Expo 67, Montreal 288 Geoffrey Copcutt, Cumbernauld New Town Centre, 1967 291 Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, Centre Pompidou, 1971–1976 296 Norman Foster, head office for Willis, Faber and Dumas, 1975 296 Norman Foster, Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, 1979–1986 297 Renzo Piano, Menil Galleries, Houston, 1986 297 Richard Rogers, Inmos factory, Newport, Wales, 1982 303 Steve Baer, solar house, New Mexico, early 1980s 313 Aero transistor radio, early 1960s 316 Volkswagen Beetle, early 1960s 320 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz, 1957 322 Buick Century, 1955 322 Richard Hamilton, Hers Is a Lush Situation, 1957–1958 333 Drag racing 335 Ford Mustang, 1967 345 Austin Maxi, 1969 345 Ford Capri, 1969 346 Page from Warshawsky catalog, 1960s 347 Paint job on dragster 352 Customized car 402 Grain elevator, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1901 403 General Mills (formerly Washburn-Crosby) Elevators, 1903 406 Paolo Soleri, Arcosanti, Arizona 406 San Xavier del Bac, near Tuscon, Arizona 407 Kitt Peak solar telescope, near Tuscon, Arizona 409 The “extraordinary luminescence” of desert light xi PREFACEPREFACE PREFACE One of Reyner Banham’s most quoted sentences reads: “Our accession to al- most unlimited supplies of energy is balanced against the possibility of mak- ing our planet uninhabitable, but this again is balanced, as we stand at the threshold of space, by the growing possibility of quitting our island earth and letting down roots elsewhere.”1 It comes from the introduction to his seminal Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, published in 1960, and it is usually quoted to demonstrate the extent to which Banham was a child of his times and, therefore, supposedly ecologically reckless, technologically naïve, and politically innocent. An optimism toward the future could seem to be more important to him than conventional social responsibility and conventions of academic propriety. As a child of his time, Banham was suitably precocious, and during the 1960s, the enfant terrible was accorded the status of a guru-like figure in progressive architectural circles. The fall from grace began in a general sense in the turbulent year of 1968, when a new political radicalism revealed the old Modernist radicalism to be more a part of the Establishment than it would have believed. In the 1970s, the fall, for Banham, was accelerated by the seeming anachronism of his unflinchingly pro-technological books such as The Architecture of the Well-tempered Environment, and was hastened by energy crises and the widespread loss of faith in progressivism as the binding myth of Western industrial society. Banham himself acknowledged that, by a form of apostolic succession, the child of his time appeared to have become yesterday’s man: the new enfant terrible was Charles Jencks with his theory of Post-Modernism. In 1979, about the time when his reputation had fallen to its lowest point, Banham reviewed a book by Michael Thompson titled Rubbish Theory: The Creation and Destruction of Value. He was fascinated by Thompson’s notion that (as Banham paraphrased it) “all transient consumables slide slowly down the parallel scales of social esteem and actual cash value until they bottom out as absolute rubbish. At that point, however, they are not neces- sarily discarded, but may suddenly leap to the top of both scales.”2 It would have been very characteristic of him to translate Thompson’s remarks about consumables into terms of professional reputation, wondering when—his incurable optimism would deny any anxiety about “if”—his own leap back xiii PREFACE into the scales of academic esteem and actual historical value would occur. The great leap forward began before his death in 1988. Critical acclaim greeted the publication of A Concrete Atlantis in 1986 and, a year later, he was appointed to the prestigious Solow chair at New York University, pole- vaulting himself back into the top architectural history league. Earlier in the decade, a selection of Banham’s writing had been published under the title Design by Choice (1981). Prior to that, some of his design crit- icism had appeared in Arts in Society (1977), a collection of essays by writers who contributed to New Society. Following his death, the splendid anthol- ogy A Critic Writes (1996) has made available a wide range of his essays. The present book is an attempt to move into a phase of critical examination of Banham’s theories and ideas. His writing is now ripe for reassessment be- cause we are historically distant enough from the period he was writing in, the issues he was affected by, and (most of) the names that he was dis- cussing. Banham’s ideas and values were largely formed by the conditions of the Second Machine Age; I would argue we are now in the Fourth, and so have as clear a view of the Second as Banham himself had of the First.3 I have been a Banham enthusiast since I first encountered Theory and De- sign in the very early 1970s, as an undergraduate. By the mid-1970s I had be- come aware of the range of his writing and marveled at the way he could write so eruditely and compellingly about such a range of topics.
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