Interview with Joseph Rykwert, architectural historian
Joseph Rykwert is an architectural historian who has spent more than four decades studying how we relate to our cities, and how our cities change our relationships to each other. He's written nearly a dozen books exploring urban life and how cities develop, most recently The Seduction of Place: The History and Future of Cities (2000). CNN just conducted a fascinating interview with Rykwert. From CNN.com:
CNN: What is your assessment of the increasing prevalence of barriers and CCTV in public buildings and spaces today?Link to CNN interview, Link to buy The Seduction of Place
JR: I think it is a tragic development. I think it cuts a swathe out of public space. In a way, I think the American Embassy in London led the way but other institutions have followed. It has blocked off a bit of London.
Whether embassies are entitled to do that or not, I don't know. But it certainly presents itself as a fort or a castle. That's the metaphor that occurs to one going past it.
In a way, it suggests foreign domination in a way that embassies never did before. There are other embassies on the square and they are very modest by comparison.
The growth of security areas is something which is a reflection on our society. We are a frightened lot in a way that the people of the 1920's and 1930's were not.
This is not a British phenomenon, it is worldwide. You find gated communities in India and China perhaps even more than you do in England. Partly, of course, it's a feature of the unadvertised growing inequality in our society. But obviously it is a symptom of fear. It's also paralleled by the growth of the great commercial shopping centers which also cut up public space. Behavior has to be conformable, conforming to. Everybody has seen The Truman Papers. (Truman Show? -ed.) I think that kind of conformity is something that is imposed by turning the citizen into a customer.
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"Everybody has seen The Truman Papers."
Not me. What *is* he referring to?
I hate the American embassy in Ottawa. It's an embarrassment. It's right in the most beautiful part of the downtown, and looks like a Frankenstein monster, modern glass on one side, and faux-old stone on the other, with a giant chimney on its head. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the swaths of road cut by concrete barriers all around it. It's too large for the lot it sits on. I'm sure security is warranted, but the need for fences was not taken into account when it was built right up to the streets.
Oh, and they have a hideous "sculpture" out front. It looks like a few chunks of construction debris welded together at odd angles. I think it's supposed to be a tree but it looks like a dead twig.
I've no idea complicity, maybe he meant "The Truman Show". I agree with his observation of "Fortress America". Sums everything up very well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladiator-At-Law
@NOEN (#3), Good call. I bet he meant The Truman Show!
Directly opposite the US embassy in London, on the other side of Grosvenor Square, is the Canadian High Commission.
It's certainly a more tasteful building. But it's more or less exactly the same size.
It's possible that he's referring to papers on architecture in Harry S. Truman's presidential archive. But, if so, which ones?