Degree Type
Honors Capstone Project
Date of Submission
Spring 5-1-2019
Capstone Advisor
Jonathan Louie
Honors Reader
Carl Schramm
Capstone Major
Architecture
Capstone College
Architecture
Audio/Visual Component
yes
Audio/Visual Location
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ml55e7t0e8uaf6w/AADa9-tT45aA0gHu-twN2TWca?dl=0
Capstone Prize Winner
no
Won Capstone Funding
yes
Honors Categories
Social Sciences
Subject Categories
Architectural History and Criticism | Architecture | Other Architecture
Abstract
Outside of the spaces we inhabit daily, the car is the frame through which the majority of Americans experience the majority of architecture. Most architecture, especially as viewed from the car window is mere scenography, mere image; but images are democratic, they are compressible, transmissible, infinitely reproducible, and therefore immortal1 . Using film, animations, models, and drawings, Sunset.zip translates the experience of architecture from the car into a highly compressed architectural artifact that preserves popular cultural memory of a place as a constructed image. This project situates itself within multiple disciplinary discourses without preferencing one over another. Sunset.zip is in dialogue with the work of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown with an alternative reading of the roadside landscapes they studied, and a shared post-modern spirit. Sunset.zip also borrows methods and content from an artist of the same era, Ed Ruscha, who documented the extraordinary nature of ordinary things. At the same time Sunset.zip is also a radical departure from canonical preservation discourse with an implicit critique of elite cultural hegemony over popular culture.
Recommended Citation
Russell-Benoit, Ethan, "Sunset.zip Popular Preservation and Learning from Roadside Architecture in Southern California" (2019). Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All. 1305.
https://surface.syr.edu/honors_capstone/1305
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
