Unreal America Architecture and Illusion

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

"Kitsch is king" in American architecture says Pulitzer Prize winner Huxtable, the New York Times's first architecture critic (1963-82). In her first book since The Tall Building Artistically Reconsidered (1984), she provides a walking tour through America's invented environments, pointing out how the "marriage of commerce and history" has altered the American landscape to unveil "the shoddy, the transient, and the unreal." The acceptance of the term "authentic reproduction" indicates a change in values, and a blurring of boundaries between fake and real. A sanitized, selective version of the past began with the "fudging of facts" in the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg. This paved the way for the "Victoriana knockoffs" of Disneyland, with its "uninspired design" and "truly awesome commercial overkill." The next step brought towns remade in the theme-park image, such as Addison, Tex., where authentic buildings were destroyed to make room for a fictitious 35-acre recreation of a nonexistent 19th-century Old Town. Amid the superstores and megamalls, Huxtable finds a denial of diversity and "history used like wallpaper" to fabricate an ersatz experience. In her final pages, Huxtable contrasts these with a survey of new architects responsible for "buildings of uncommon beauty and intelligence." Readers who discovered Huxtable's visionary viewpoints in the New York Times and followed her writing through a half-dozen books (Kicked a Building Lately?) will eagerly seek out this examination of environment as entertainment. Illustrations. (Apr.)

Library Journal

In her first book since The Tall Building Artistically Reconsidered (LJ 6/15/85), architecture critic Huxtable here critiques the American devotion to invented environments. She looks at the artificial towns, streetscapes, and ambiance of Disney parks, Williamsburg, and many other places built in this century but of no time. The American comfort with these created worlds disturbs Huxtable. Her contempt for what has become a common tastenearly a universal aesthetic of cleaned-up, socially sanitized environmentshas sound intellectual footing and is offered with appropriate passion, but it is also rooted in the elitism of the intelligentsia, offended and distrustful of the popular partly because it is popular. The fear that quality architecture will lose out to the designs driven by marketers, consumerism, and entertainment has been a presence in specialized circles for many years. The issue is given a thoughtful, if admittedly one-sided, airing here for a broader audience by the much admired Huxtable. Recommended for public and academic libraries.David Bryant, New Canaan P.L., Ct.