Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles

Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles
BBC, 1972

I don't find Reyner Banham a particularly likeable individual but there are plenty of good things in this film about Los Angeles architecture, including a brief visit to the Eames House (Case Study No.8) in Pacific Palisades, possibly my favourite modernist architectural environment. Plus a chat with artist Ed Ruscha at an old-skool drive-in about his responses to LA architecture through his photobooks of Sunset Strip and paintings of gas stations.

I haven't read Banham's book on Los Angeles but I suspect it would be an interesting companion to Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown's seminal text Learning from Las Vegas, Banham's Modernism versus Venturi's Postmodernist approach.

Both cities were exemplar studies in the state of American architecture in the 1970s. As Banham was from Norwich and Venturi Scott Brown were a Chicago-based architectural practice, I wonder whether it took an outsider's perspective to appreciate what was going on with super-highways and the 'decorated shed'.

The film also has me laughing every time as Banham's appearance always seems so unlikely he looks like the world's worst under cover cop, and reminds me of Peter Seller's Inspector Clouseau in one of his more ridiculous disguises. Can you spot the Banham?