A free-wheeling guided tour to the cityscape of Southern California, grounding architecture as a multidisciplinary art
John Chase has worked as a journalist, architectural designer, critic and Disney Imagineer. He is currently the urban designer for the City of West Hollywood. His previous books include Everyday Urbanism, Las Vegas: The Success of Excess and Exterior Decoration.
Setting aside costume jewels such as the Getty Center, Los Angeles
architecture-think reckless Spanish-tiled mansard genre mixing,
mammoth doughnuts and L-shaped mini-malls-gets little respect in
highbrow circles. Thankfully John Chase is around to defend it.
Every page of his Glitter Stucco & Dumpster Diving exhales
affectionate architectural populism and a refreshing disdain for
art snobs.
*LA Weekly*
His findings reveal a fiercely democratic, if ad hoc, urbanism in
which developers, homeowners, renters, retailers, pedestrians and
the homeless all demarcate, and thereby create, civic place ... he
spouts infectious prose and incendiary theories as easily as Dave
Hickey or Mike Davis do to explain LA's ever-proliferating
landscape.
*Loud Paper*
Chase's arguments are refreshing and challenging ... They have the
advantage of understanding contemporary architecture without the
pitched crisis and naive celebration which postmodern theorizing
tends to provoke.
*Fuse Magazine*
An interesting argument for further legitimizing popular
architecture.
*I. D. Magazine*
Chase's affection for the modern city (even its trash) makes
Glitter Stucco a real treat to read.
*Paper Magazine*
An architect by training, Chase is also gaining long-overdue
accolades as a historian, critic and often very funny writer.
*Los Angeles Times*
Chase adeptly probes the intersecting principles that affected Los
Angeles's building design, showing for example, how the bungalows
built by developers in the 1920s aped the large period revival
houses of the same decade.
*Publishers Weekly*
Chase, who has been a 'journalist, architectural designer, critic,
and Disney Imagineer,' puts all of his skills on display in this
sprawling and enjoyable tour of the Los Angeles landscape.
*Interiors Magazine*
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