10/7 "Reyner Banham Loves LA" architecture & u

[esotouric]

Southeast LA architecture / urbanism tour follows in the steps of critic Reyner Banham

WHAT: Esotouric presents "Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles"
WHEN: Sunday, October 7, 11am-5pm
COST: $55, or save $30 on four tours with a Season Pass
WHERE: Departs from the Bradbury Building at 3rd and Broadway, tour covers Vernon, Bell Gardens, Santa Fe Springs, Downey, East Los Angeles, Lincoln Heights
ETC: LA Reads? book club meeting on Banham's "Architecture of Four Ecologies" on Thursday, Sept. 27 at the rooftop pool of the downtown Standard Hotel

"Reyner Banham was as smart and sassy as any critic in the postwar period. What made him distinctive was his passion for the edgiest expressions of his technological age, not only in avant-garde architecture but in anything designed - Cadillacs and transistor radios, custom hot-rods and painted surfboards, gadgets and gizmos; all of which he discussed with great verve in 12 books and over 700 articles." –Hal Foster

LOS ANGELES- No other city has so fascinated architecture critics and scholars of urban and cultural studies than L.A., that sprawling, self-referential zone of mystery and glamour. British writer Reyner Banham was the first to love Los Angeles for what she was, her ugliness as well as her beauty. In the early 1970s he abandoned his academic preconceptions to revel in this city of freeways, foothills, beaches and suburbs, built on mobility and flux by a series of invaders. Along the way, he discovered extraordinary spaces in neighborhoods that were often overlooked for being too remote, too industrial, or simply occupying invisible "flyover country" beneath the great L.A. freeways.

In this smoggy city on the edge of the western dream, nothing was like what came before. Social status was no longer communicated through stone palaces that looked like they fought every step of the journey over the Rocky Mountains, but by easy freeway access and wacky drive-thrus, light, ventilation, organic design and a sensitivity to a built environment— commercial and architectural innovations which would have been unthinkable anywhere and anytime else. Banham saw that behind the urban sprawl was a pattern, almost a language, which could not be understood through old modes of architectural and urban criticism, but which required new ways of seeing and of thinking.

Reyner Banham published his influential book "Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies" more than three decades ago before beginning a career as a professor at UC Santa Cruz. Now three of his students, Esotouric's Kim Cooper, Nathan Marsak and Richard Schave, will take a busload of urban explorers deep into uncharted Southeast L.A. to discover Banham's iconic "Plains of Id" and explore how the city has changed since Banham mapped it.

The Autopia ecology that Banham chronicled no longer exists. The postwar military-industrial complex built on cheap fuel, big trucks and fast-moving freeways has collapsed. The rail lines are being restored, and a Los Angeles that can rely on public transportation is beginning to re-emerge. On this tour, we'll explore how the big message of the Southern California Dream manifests itself in these new contexts, and continue the work that Banham left unfinished when he died in 1988.

This new Esotouric bus adventure begins downtown and works its way south through Vernon, Bell Gardens, Santa Fe Springs and Downey, and through the past two centuries, exploring some of L.A.'s seldom-seen gems. Turning the West Side-centric notion of an L.A. architecture tour on its head—just like Banham's book did for the historical monograph – the bus goes into areas not traditionally associated with the important, beautiful or significant, raising issues of preservation, adaptive reuse and the evolution of the city. The locations all speak to the power, mutability and reach of the Southern California Dream. Some of the tour stops are:

Pueblo del Rio (1942), the first African-American housing development in LA, is a fascinating public project designed by Paul Williams and Richard Neutra, among others. Its application of the International Style and mass-produced pre-fab methods to the needs of the growing Southern California population leaves room for considerable dialogue.

The Gage Mansion (1808). The oldest adobe structure in Los Angeles County, this fascinating home sits smack dab in the middle of a 65-year-old trailer park on the banks of the Rio Hondo River in Bell Gardens. Between the layers of context at this site is the history of migration and growth in the Southland, from Spanish land grants to the dust bowl to the vast waves of stucco suburbs.

The Bradbury Building (1893). A favorite of Banham's, this structure, the oldest surviving commercial building in the historic core, with its delicate ironwork and astonishing atrium, represents a feature of each Banham book: a structure that uses the builder's ingenuity and the uniqueness of its setting to make something utterly of its time and place.

The Downey Space Plant (1929-present). It began as airplane factory carved out of a castor bean field and grew to be the hub of North American Aerospace development, before being sold off in pieces in the early 2000s. Currently it's a motion picture sound stage. Is the only long-term solution for this awe-inspiring, 160-acre space a vertically-integrated condominium and retail development?

East Los Angeles Train Station (1932). A prominent location in the 1946 film "The Postman Always Rings Twice," it was built to deal with congestion and overcrowding in the existing downtown terminals. Currently a picturesque Mission-style ruin in the shadow of the wacky Citadel shopping center, will it rise again as the rail lines reassert themselves?

These are just a few of the extraordinary buildings and stories we'll explore on the debut edition of "Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles," Esotouric's first architectural tour.

Upcoming Esotouric bus tour and "LA Reads?" book club schedule:
Thurs Sept 6 - "LA Reads?" James M. Cain's "Mildred Pierce"
Sat Sept 8 - Hotel Horrors (1pm) and Main Street Vice (3:30pm) tours
Sat Sept 15 – Serenade: James M. Cain's Southern California Nightmare tour
Sat Sept 22 – In A Lonely Place: Raymond Chandler's LA tour
Sat Sept 22 – Blood & Dumplings (San Gabriel Valley true crime tour)
Thurs Sept 27 – "LA Reads?" Reyner Banham's "Architecture of Four Ecologies"
Sun Oct 7– Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles tour
Thurs Oct 18 – "LA Reads?" Nathanael West's "Day of the Locust"
Sat Oct 20– The Real Black Dahlia tour
Sun Oct 28 – Hallowe'en Horrors featuring Crimebo the Clown tour

For more info on Esotouric please visit
http://www.esotouric.com or call 323-223-2767

For more on Reyner Banham, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reyner_Banham

And the BBC documentary "Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles"
http://reyner.notlong.com

For more on the site specific Los Angeles book club LA Reads (formerly Nobody Reads in LA), see http://www.lareads.com