Previous Owner Name. In Very Good+ condition and Very Good+ dustjacket. Pulitzer Prize-winner Ada Louise Huxtable meditates on modern American architecture and its implications in The Unreal America: Architecture and Illusion, a book based on a lecture she delivered to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Huxtable argues that theme parks, shopping malls, historic restorations, and towns like Disney's Celebration create "surrogate environments" detached from the reality of everyday experience. She rails against historic preservation, claiming that attempts to re-create the past in such places as Ellis Island and Boston's Faneuil Hall result in hollow shadows of the originals that have little to offer the modern viewer. The marriage of culture and consumerism in these places also gets Huxtable's gourd. She seems to feel that much of this architecture is designed for the sole purpose of impelling consumerism. In the preface, Huxtable writes that as a young journalist she was told to "tell the reader what you think," and here she does exactly that with fervor and clarity.

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Bibliographic Details

Title

The Unreal America: Architecture and Illusion

Publisher

New Press

Publication Date

1997

Language

English

ISBN 10

1565840550

ISBN 13

9781565840553

Binding

Hardcover

Condition

Very Good

Dust Jacket Condition

Very Good

Seller catalogs

Architecture

About this title

Synopsis

This text examines society's attitude towards the proliferation of invented environments such as theme parks and shopping malls. It argues that "real" architecture is losing a battle with user-friendly, themed products of a profit-driven culture of marketing, consumerism and entertainment.

Synopsis

Examines America's preference for invented environments theme parks, shopping malls, historic restorations, heritage marketplaces, new towns like Disney's Celebration, and the latest developer dream houses. Huxtable ( The Tall Building Artistically Reconsidered ), suggests that art and architecture today reflect a view of reality detached from the

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