In the Oaks... (Sherman Oaks) sighs girlishly over the "pizzazz" of the signage and typography on his favorite '50s and '60s stucco apartment buildings. And I agree! The "s" word has become a dirty one in architectural circles, with campaigns all across the country for people to "de-stucco" their homes, but something about this style of down 'n' dirty dingbat production lent itself very well to innovative, stylish designs that were in lockstep with the mid-century modern city. Urban designer John Chase dedicates much of his excellent book to just this, saying that the "honesty of the stucco box was inadvertent, born of the ease with which a speculative developer could disguise economic necessity as modernistic chic," and noting the tabula rasa style of these pre-ornamented boxes, writes about the often lush and outrageous courtyard-and-garden landscaping (all tiki and tropicalia), bizarre gargoyles adorning facades, terrace railings that bulged out like Chinese-food take-out boxes, and street-level carport slots that proudly held the upper landings up on stilts like a father showing off a newborn baby. Chase calls it "communication with the street," and admits that this was mostly out of necessity because of small lot sizes, but suggests that the eye-catching designs made the passer-by feel welcome. It appealed to the "ephemeral" sensibility of the times too, the celebration of the artificial and temporary, the idea of "the future" being a finite thing that was already there (and was AWESOME), with no concern or duty towards more realistic timelines. It's interesting that much of the style from this period is called "atomic," because it comes from such a defeatist Cold War mindset, of party-like-it's-1999 resignation towards the there-and-then -- which was allowed to be fake-futurist because wtf is a "real" future when you're doing air-raid drills and reading civil-defense bomb-scare propaganda every day?
The building I live in now comes from this era, and so does the building I'm moving into soon (which I like a lot less except for its cool typography and how its orientation reminds me of a tall person laying on his stomach with his face looking out on the main street while the length of his side hugs the side street). It's not ideal for everyone, but for me it's loads of fun.
I never thought I'd heard the styles I grew up feeling ambivalent about praised so eloquently!
Posted by: John | August 09, 2006 at 05:47 AM