A4389 Vanishing Cities: International Fairs and Expos in the United States
History/Theory SeminarPaul Bentel
TOPIC
This course will examine the architectural design and site planning of the World's Fairs and International Expositions in the United States since the mid-19th century. Case studies will investigate the layout of fairgrounds and the design of pavilions for evidence of novel planning and design strategies and will seek to define the influence of new materials and construction techniques on the form of buildings. Emphasis will be given to the influence of fairs and expositions on contemporary architecture and urban design, both as corroborations of existing design conventions and as challenges to the dominant canons of style. In addition to this focused study, we will consider the broader historical context of which these events are a part in an effort to understand the reasons for their proliferation and demise between the mid-19th and late 20th century.
We will pursue a central thesis that whereas these events often depicted in their buildings and grounds an aesthetic novelty associated with progressive social visions, they were conceived as popular events geared to the tastes of a mass-audience comprised principally of a middle class. Moreover, as events which drew their sponsorship predominantly from industry and government, they formalized a popular mythology which sustained the interests of business and the politically empowered. Both the aspiration for popular appeal as well as the conditions of their patronage sharply limited their potential to serve as the venues for authentic challenges to the status quo. Thus, the fairs and expos between 1853 and 1964 offer insights into an emerging aesthetic modernism at the same time as they suggest the origins of an ambivalence to social change pervasive throughout the Modern Movement.
FORMAT AND REQUIREMENTS
The course will be divided in two parts. In the first part, we will endeavor to construct a chronological and thematic overview by examining a series of major expositions beginning with the New York of 1853 and concluding with the New York World's Fair in 1964. Students will be required complete assigned readings and participate in class discussion. In the second part, students will prepare and present focused studies of fairs and/or fairgrounds, their architecture and planning, which drew on the historical perspectives and methods discussed in the first part of the semester. I will encourage both graphic and written documentation and analysis. Al though the material under consideration is by nature historical, students with special interests may, with special permission, pursue work more speculative than historical in nature. Following their in-class presentations, students will be required to submit their work in written paragraphic form equivalent to a 20-25 page paper.
SCHEDULE: Part One
1 Introduction: Architecture, Mass-Culture and the International Exposition in the United States
2 Experiments in building technology and construction methods at the Fairs, 1853-1933
3 Architecture and urban planning at the Fairs, 1893-1915
4 Regionalism and modernity: American Fairs on the West Coast.
5 The Chicago Century of Progress International Exposition and Regional Planning, 1925-33
6 Consumerism, advertising and architectural imagery at the Fairs between the Wars, 1933-39
7 Nationalism, internationalism and the architecture of the World s Fairs, 1939-64
8 Thoughts on the International Exposition and its architecture since 1964
SCHEDULE: Part Two (CASE STUDIES)
9 Fairs and new building technologies and construction methods
10 Urban design, planning and the layout of fairgrounds
11 Architectural design, industrial design, advertising and the Fairs
12 Fairs and the avant-garde
13 The governmental presence at the Fairs
14 The transportation industry and the Fairs