American Autopia

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American Autopia

Author : Gabrielle Esperdy
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
Page : 553 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2019-10-28
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9780813943107

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American Autopia by Gabrielle Esperdy Pdf

Early to mid-twentieth-century America was the heyday of a car culture that has been called an "automobile utopia." In American Autopia, Gabrielle Esperdy examines how the automobile influenced architectural and urban discourse in the United States from the earliest days of the auto industry to the aftermath of the 1970s oil crisis. Paying particular attention to developments after World War II, Esperdy creates a narrative that extends from U.S. Routes 1 and 66 to the Las Vegas Strip to California freeways, with stops at gas stations, diners, main drags, shopping centers, and parking lots along the way. While it addresses the development of auto-oriented landscapes and infrastructures, American Autopia is not a conventional history, offering instead an exploration of the wide-ranging evolution of car-centric territories and drive-in typologies, looking at how they were scrutinized by diverse cultural observers in the middle of the twentieth century. Drawing on work published in the popular and professional press, and generously illustrated with evocative images, the book shows how figures as diverse as designer Victor Gruen, geographer Jean Gottmann, theorist Denise Scott Brown, critic J.B. Jackson, and historian Reyner Banham constructed "autopia" as a place and an idea. The result is an intellectual history and interpretive roadmap to the United States of the Automobile.

Inventing Autopia

Author : Jeremiah B.C. Axelrod
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 414 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2009-06-02
Category : History
ISBN : 9780520252844

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Inventing Autopia by Jeremiah B.C. Axelrod Pdf

"Flat-out one of the most interesting books I've read in years. To say that a book about California might rank with Kevin Starr's Americans and the California Dream or Mike Davis' City of Quartz is dangerously high praise, but I think Axelrod's book may someday be in that league."—John Ganim, University of California, Riverside "Inventing Autopia thoughtfully weaves together planning and policy history with cultural history to great effect. It is sure to change our understanding of the ways in which Los Angeles not only grew and developed but envisioned itself in the era."—William Deverell, author of Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past

The Automobile and American Culture

Author : David Lanier Lewis,Laurence Goldstein
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
Page : 436 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 1983
Category : Automobiles
ISBN : 047208044X

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The Automobile and American Culture by David Lanier Lewis,Laurence Goldstein Pdf

Presents essays on all phases of the American automobile industry and the effect of its product on individual lives and the culture of the society.

The Utopian Impulse in Latin America

Author : K. Beauchesne,A. Santos
Publisher : Springer
Page : 307 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2011-10-24
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780230339613

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The Utopian Impulse in Latin America by K. Beauchesne,A. Santos Pdf

An exploration of the concept of utopia in Latin America from the earliest accounts of the New World to current cultural production, the carefully selected essays in this volume represent the latest research on the topic by some of the most important Latin Americanists working in North American academia today.

Speed Capital

Author : Brian M. Ingrassia
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
Page : 203 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2024-02-06
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 9780252055218

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Speed Capital by Brian M. Ingrassia Pdf

How a speedway became a legendary sports site and sparked America’s car culture The 1909 opening of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway marked a foundational moment in the history of automotive racing. Events at the famed track and others like it also helped launch America’s love affair with cars and an embrace of road systems that transformed cities and shrank perceptions of space. Brian Ingrassia tells the story of the legendary oval’s early decades. This story revolves around Speedway cofounder and visionary businessman Carl Graham Fisher, whose leadership in the building of the transcontinental Lincoln Highway and the iconic Dixie Highway had an enormous impact on American mobility. Ingrassia looks at the Speedway’s history as a testing ground for cars and airplanes, its multiple close brushes with demolition, and the process by which racing became an essential part of the Golden Age of Sports. At the same time, he explores how the track’s past reveals the potent links between sports capitalism and the selling of nostalgia, tradition, and racing legends.

Waltäó»s Utopia

Author : Priscilla Hobbs
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2015-07-14
Category : History
ISBN : 9781476622132

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Waltäó»s Utopia by Priscilla Hobbs Pdf

The “Happiest Place on Earth” opened in 1955 during a trying time in American life—the Cold War. Disneyland was envisioned as a utopian resort where families could play together and escape the tension of the “real world.” Since its construction, the park has continually been updated to reflect changing American culture. The park’s themed features are based on familiar Disney stories and American history and folklore. They reflect the hopes of a society trying to understand itself in the wake of World War II. This book takes a fresh look at the park, analyzing its cultural narrative by looking beyond consumerism and corporate marketing to how Disney helped America cope during the Cold War and beyond.

Interior Design on Edge

Author : Erica Morawski,Deborah Schneiderman,Keena Suh,Karin Tehve,Karyn Zieve
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2024-04-25
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9781040009499

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Interior Design on Edge by Erica Morawski,Deborah Schneiderman,Keena Suh,Karin Tehve,Karyn Zieve Pdf

Interior Design on Edge explores ways that interiors both constitute and upset our edges, whether physical, conceptual or psychological, imagined, implied, necessary or discriminatory. The essays in this volume explore these questions in history, theory, and praxis through a focus on different periods, cultures, and places. Interior Design on Edge showcases new scholarship that expands and contests traditional relationships between architecture, interiors, and the people that use and design them, provoking readers to consider the interior differently, moving beyond its traditional, architectural definition. Focusing on the concept of interiority considered in a wider sense, it draws on interdisciplinary modes of investigation and analysis and reflects the latest theoretical developments in the fields of interior design history and practice. With new research from both established and emerging authors, this volume will make a valuable contribution to the fields of Interior Design, Architecture, Art and Design History, Cultural History, Visual Culture Studies, and Urban Studies.

Transport Revolutions

Author : Richard Gilbert,Anthony Pearl
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 374 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2012-05-16
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781136550911

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Transport Revolutions by Richard Gilbert,Anthony Pearl Pdf

Transport Revolutions: Moving People and Freight without Oil sets out the challenges to our growing dependence on transport fuelled by low-priced oil. These challenges include an early peak in world oil production and profound climate change resulting in part from oil use. It proposes responses to ensure effective, secure movement of people and goods in ways that make the best use of renewable sources of energy while minimizing environmental impacts. Transport Revolutions synthesizes engineering, economics, environment, organization, policy and technology, and draws extensively on current data to present important conclusions. The authors argue that land transport in the first half of the 21st century will feature at least two revolutions. One will involve the use of electric drives rather than internal combustion engines. Another will involve powering many of these drives directly from the electric grid - as trains and trolley buses are powered today - rather than from on-board fuel. They go on to discuss marine transport, whose future is less clear, and aviation, which could see the most dramatic breaks from current practice. With its expert analysis of the politics and business of transport, Transport Revolutions is essential reading for professionals and students in transport, energy, town planning and public policy.

Monumental Jesus

Author : Margaret M. Grubiak
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
Page : 281 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2020-02-11
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9780813943756

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Monumental Jesus by Margaret M. Grubiak Pdf

The American landscape is host to numerous works of religious architecture, sometimes questionable in taste and large, if not titanic, in scale. In her lively study of satire and religious architecture, Margaret Grubiak challenges how we typically view such sites by shifting the focus from believers to doubters, and from producers to consumers. Grubiak considers an array of sacred architectural constructions—from "Touchdown Jesus" at the University of Notre Dame to the Wizard of Oz Mormon temple outside Washington D.C. to the renamed "Gumby Jesus" of the Christ of the Ozarks statue in Eureka Springs, Arkansas - and how such constructions are confronted by the doubt and dismissiveness articulated by the more skeptical of their viewers. These responses of doubt activate our religious built environment in ways unanticipated but illuminating, asking us, at times forcefully, to consider and clarify what it is we believe. Opening up new avenues of thinking about how people deal with theological questions in the vernacular, Grubiak’s book shows how religious doubt is made manifest in the humorous, satirical, blasphemous, and popular culture responses to religious architecture and image in modern America. Midcentury: Architecture, Landscape, Urbanism, and Design

Traces of J. B. Jackson

Author : Helen L. Horowitz
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
Page : 499 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2020-01-21
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9780813943350

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Traces of J. B. Jackson by Helen L. Horowitz Pdf

J. B. Jackson transformed forever how Americans understand their landscape, a concept he defined as land shaped by human presence. In the first major biography of the greatest pioneer in landscape studies, Helen Horowitz shares with us a man who focused on what he regarded as the essential American landscape, the everyday places of the countryside and city, exploring them as texts that reveal important truths about society and culture, present and past. In Jackson’s words, landscape is "history made visible." After a varied life of traveling, writing, sketching, ranch labor, and significant service in army intelligence in World War II, Jackson moved to New Mexico and single-handedly created the magazine Landscape. As it grew under his direction throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Landscape attracted a wide range of contributors. Jackson became a man in demand as a lecturer and, beginning in the late 1960s, he established the field of landscape studies at Berkeley, Harvard, and elsewhere, mentoring many who later became important architects, planners, and scholars. Horowitz brings this singular person to life, revealing how Jackson changed our perception of the landscape and, through friendship as well as his writings, profoundly influenced the lives of many, including her own.

Consuming Landscapes

Author : Thomas Zeller
Publisher : JHU Press
Page : 263 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2022-10-04
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9781421444826

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Consuming Landscapes by Thomas Zeller Pdf

"The book explores the clash between prioritizing safety over scenery in the early development of automobile roadways in the United States and Germany"--

The Garden in the Machine

Author : Avigail Sachs
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
Page : 417 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2023-04-13
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9780813948966

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The Garden in the Machine by Avigail Sachs Pdf

The Tennessee Valley Authority was the largest single agency created under the auspices of the New Deal legislation. Until 1933, when the project was initiated, the Tennessee Valley was known romantically as "a region of untapped potential" and, less romantically, as one of the most impoverished and isolated areas of the country. The TVA was responsible for three large-scale environmental projects–the river, land, and power machines–but the project also had social, even utopian, goals. In service to the latter, the TVA put together a cadre of regional planners, architects, and landscape architects that Avigail Sachs calls the "atelier TVA." These professionals contributed to the design of the system of multipurpose dams, arranged visitor centers and scenic routes, built housing and communities (although both were segregated), and instigated a regional recreation industry. In addition to its planning and design history audience, this volume will be of interest to environmental historians and historians of the Progressive Era. Publication of this volume was assisted by a grant from Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund.

The American Amusement Park

Author : Dale Samuelson,Wendy Yegoiants
Publisher : Motorbooks International
Page : 168 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2001
Category : Amusement parks
ISBN : 9780760309810

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The American Amusement Park by Dale Samuelson,Wendy Yegoiants Pdf

A photographic retrospective covers more than 100 years of images from the history of the American amusement park.

Danger Sound Klaxon!

Author : Matthew F. Jordan
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
Page : 325 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2023-02-15
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780813947976

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Danger Sound Klaxon! by Matthew F. Jordan Pdf

Danger Sound Klaxon! reveals the untold story of the Klaxon automobile horn, one of the first great electrical consumer technologies of the twentieth century. Although its metallic shriek at first shocked pedestrians, savvy advertising strategies convinced consumers across the United States and western Europe to adopt the shrill Klaxon horn as the safest signaling technology available in the 1910s. The widespread use of Klaxons in the trenches of World War I, however, transformed how veterans heard this car horn, and its traumatic association with gas attacks ultimately doomed this once ubiquitous consumer technology. By charting the meteoric rise and eventual fall of the Klaxon, Matthew Jordan highlights how perceptions of sound-producing technologies are guided by, manipulated, and transformed through advertising strategies, public debate, consumer reactions, and governmental regulations. Jordan demonstrates in this fascinating history how consumers are led toward technological solutions for problems themselves created by technology.

Urban Noir

Author : James J. Ward,Cynthia J. Miller
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 254 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2017-09-06
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781442278332

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Urban Noir by James J. Ward,Cynthia J. Miller Pdf

This collection of essays examines how New York and Los Angeles are depicted in noir and neo-noir films from the 1940s through the 21st century. These essays consider how the architectural sights and city sounds inform such films as Cotton Comes to Harlem, Drive, Kiss of Death, Naked City, and Nightcrawler, among others.