Reyner Banham once spoke about the architectural properties of crisps. I would love to have been there. This week I am re-reading his thrilling book on Los Angeles, The Architecture of Four Ecologies, and I’m looking through twenty-year-old magazines.
I’m reading Banham again because his generous and perceptive take on LA always feels like comfort reading. In March 2021, just opening the book seems to bring the warmed-concrete spaciousness of that city, with its standing freeway pillars and playful flow between urban and wilderness, into the saggy darkness of the lockdown home.
And I’m looking through old mags because Banham sent me back to GTA 5 and then GTA 5 sent me back to a Wipeout Fusion print ad, a double-page spread, once seen and never forgotten, in which London has been chosen as a site for the development of a multi-gajillion pound anti-grav racing track, and the citizens are not happy about it.
