Reyner banham biography of christopher

It covers the full range of his oeuvre and discusses the values, enthusiasms, and influences that formed his thinking. Reyner Banham : Historian of the Immediate Future. Nigel Whiteley. An intellectual biography of the cultural critic Reyner Banham. He broke with utopian and technical formalism. Scenes in America Deserta talks of open spaces and his anticipation of a 'modern' future.

In A Concrete Atlantis: U. Industrial Building and European Modern Architecture, — Banham demonstrated the influence of American grain elevators and "Daylight" factories on the Bauhaus and other modernist projects in Europe. Banham was a prolific journalist of some articles[ 7 ] both within and outside of the architectural press, including regular columns in New Statesman — and New Society Selections of his journalism articles were collected in Design by Choiceedited by Penny Sparke [ 8 ] and A Critic Writes which includes a full bibliographyedited by his wife Mary Banham and others.

He had been appointed the Sheldon H. He was featured in the short documentary Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles ; in his book on Los Angeles, Banham said that he learned to drive so he could read the city in the original. InNigel Whiteley published a critical biography of Banham, Reyner Banham: Historian of the Immediate Future[ 13 ] in which he gives an in-depth overview of Banham's work and ideas.

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Reyner banham biography of christopher

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Toggle the table of contents. Christopher Hinton, Baron Hinton of Bankside. Calder Hall. To see it, say, sitting cross-legged on the floor, is to see another person in the room. Could it be that Ogle-MIRA have gone the whole functionalist route and, by producing something exquisitely adapted to its function, have satisfied one of the Platonic canons of beauty?

Certainly, the design seems to have acquired qualities over and above the obvious service of necessity. But then the necessities it has to serve do demand that — like a nude or portrait — it should be some sort of simulacrum of a human anatomy. The only way to simulate the physical behaviour of a human thorax under disaster conditions is to build a cage of steel ribs that sweep up to their points of attachment like natural-grown ones; and the only way to simulate the relationship of the pelvic assembly to a seat belt is to build in phosphor-bronze for correct weight a virtual replica of a natural pelvis, complete with its iliac crests.

In real life, these catch in the seat-belt and stop you sliding under the dashboard, which is what more primitive dummies tended to do. But a straightforward emulation of the Great Designer in the Sky can only get you so far. Sheer engineering savvy has to take over; and the Ogle solutions are so convincing that it is difficult not to feel that they represent genuine alternatives that the process of vertebrate evolution could only have abandoned with regret.

Conversely, there are some works of art which it mocks hollow. Epstein, it is reported, had great difficulty in making his figure hold the rock drill convincingly. If Ihnatowicz and Ogle could get together, Positronic Robots would be only just round the corner. It is humane, moral, British, functional and beautiful. For this will undoubtedly be one of the memorable designs of the seventies, however much Ogle or anybody else manages to improve on it.

The memorability lies in a quality that one or two other classic industrial designs also possess — the power to change the problem by answering it properly. The stories you hear about car-manufacturers using real cadavers are true. Could you ask more of your friendly neighborhood prevento mori? The archival text appears with the permission of the New Statesman, as do the images from the January 20, issue of New Society.

I would like to thank Nancy Levinson and Josh Wallaert for inviting me to contribute to the series Future Archive; and the Graham Foundation for funding it. Sincere thanks to Adrian Forty, who graciously submitted to a very long interview, and also to Rebecca Spaven, researcher for the Bartlett History Projectwho generously shared her findings with us.

Douglas Haskell was a leading figure in 20th-century design journalism. His work deserves to be better known. Once a formidable critic and teacher, and now largely forgotten, Sibyl Moholy-Nagy deserves new attention. Robert C. Weaver was a central figure in the 20th-century battles for housing justice and civil rights in the United States.

His life and legacy deserve to be better known.