Glitter Stucco and Dumpster Diving

Reflections on Building Production in the Vernacular City

Browse Return to Previous Page       Related Subjects All Subjects Architecture Cultural Studies

by John Chase

Verso

Due/Published June 2004, 256 pages, paper

ISBN 1859841384

New in paper (S04)

In this guided tour to the cityscape of Southern California, from movie-star mansions to the alleys of the homeless, urban planner John Chase combines gossip, anecdote, archival research and tabloid-worthy self-revelation, grounding architecture as a multi-disciplinary art.

Speeding across the California landscape, Chase pauses frequently to see what's really there: not just what the movies have taught us to expect, but the range and variation of the built environment that occupies what he calls "everyday space."

A practicing architect and urban planner, as well as an important architectural critic, Chase explores a wide range of locales and examines their architectural features from the gay community space of West Hollywood, to the stucco box apartment complexes of the 1950s, to the truly weird mix of domestic arrangements in Venice Beach, to gated communities, to some of the historic houses of Hollywood and Beverly Hills and to the most recent transformations of the casino architecture in Las Vegas. Chase makes the mundane world of Southern California vistas come alive on the page.