Our land acknowledgement project: “Living Lands ”

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Let us assure you
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Forces of Friction
Acts of Looking
Keep Safe
Figuring Territory
Of Migration
A Social Reset
With and Within
Will Happiness Find Us?
What about the provinces?
A history of references
Into the material world
Take care
Nature reorganized
Ideas of living
The Other Architect
Origins of the digital
The rest of your senses
Journeys and translation
What the future looked like
The planet is the client
Technology sometimes falls short
What you can do with the city
Let us assure you

Architecture can often find itself in service of a message: this institution is trustworthy or forward-thinking; that individual or company is powerful; here is a world you want to buy into. This topic looks at examples of the built environment as a kind of public relations strategy. In unpacking the ways that architecture—and, equally importantly, representations of it—lays claims and exerts influence, we might better understand the versions of reality that architecture proposes to us.

The Radical Life of a Landscape
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Empire
Postscript: History Repeats Itself
The Political Life of a Building
Toys Shape Minds no. 5
Ben Schnall, View of the dedication ceremony of the John F. Kennedy Educational Civic, and Cultural Center showing a partial view of the platform with people and a photograph of the model of the building, Mineola, New York, 1968
Power Pictures
Toys Shape Minds no. 16
Ed Fausty and Brian Rose, photographers. Williamsburg Bridge, New York City, New York. 1981
New York: Capital of the Twentieth Century
Stone and Gold
Hedrich-Blessing, studio. Export Building, Half-Ton Truck Plant, Chrysler Corporation Dodge division, Mound and Eight Mile Roads. June 1938
Detroit: The Invisible Content of a Photograph
Realism and Illusion
In Search of a Public Image
Classigraphy
None
Touring The Architecture of Reassurance
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Hang the Architect
Robert Burley. Overview, overcast day, Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland, California. October 1991.
The Architecture of Death
Article 11 of 16

Realism and Illusion

Photographs by Catherine Wagner

One of the notions I worked with was the idea that Disney sets perfect the art of illusion. My photographs act exponentially to add yet another layer to the simulacrum of heightened reality. Whether I was in Paris, Tokyo, Florida or Los Angeles the sets were vacant of cultural clues.
— Catherine Wagner, 1997

In 1995, as part of the development of the exhibition The Architecture of Reassurance, we commissioned Catherine Wagner to photograph the four Disney theme parks (in Anaheim, California; Orlando, Florida; Tokyo; and Paris). The resulting photos were also shown in the 1997 exhibition Realism and Illusion.

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