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Zines devoted to architecture and urbanism explore the life of
cities
(Photo:MacDuff Everton/©Corbis)
| Little magazines bring a breath of fresh, democratic, and sometimes
visionary air to the architecture dialogue. by Andrea Moed The "zine revolution" of the early 1990s ushered a new set of characters into publishing. Hobbyists, conspiracy theorists, and obsessives of all kinds who longed for a magazine all about Star Trek or thrift stores, libertarianism or the letter Q, discovered that they could start one themselves. Armed with newly accessible desktop publishing software and industrial-strength photocopiers, they went trolling for hidden communities of like-minded subscribers and contributors. It might seem surprising, then, that there are zines about architecture and urban design. Architects and planners are no hidden community--they have trade organizations, conferences, and glossy coffee-table journals. But the creators of architecture zines have a different audience in mind. They want to turn regular civilians--even those who may never have thought about their surroundings--into architecture fans. Commercial publishers assume that a well-defined set of people (i.e., professionals, mostly) care to read about the forms of buildings and the infrastructure of cities; the best zine publishers reach out to everybody else. They write about and photograph the built environment with candor and rare enthusiasm, producing great reading for both novices and initiates. Most of these zines adopt a self-consciously contrarian point of view. Whether they are trained architects or self-taught critics, the authors pointedly bypass showpiece proj-ects in major cities. Instead, they explore peripheral but historically significant neighborhoods like the Cleveland suburb of Parma, or little-known curiosities like Forestiere's Underground Gardens in Fresno, California. "The discussion [of architecture] is incredibly narrow," says Amy Balkin, cocreator of the zine Lackluster. "The places that don't make money don't get talked about," adds her collaborator, James Harbison. In their latest issue, Balkin and Harbison look at "people who build their own shelter," visiting such sites as the Underground Gardens, a village made of glass bottles, and Nitwitt Ridge, a multilevel California cliff dwelling built single-handedly by a man who called himself Captain Nitwitt. Harbison is an installation artist whose main architectural education was acquired in a class taught by William Katavolos, an unconventional architect known for his experiments in "aquatecture"--soft buildings with walls full of water. Balkin, a painter, first got interested in architecture while looking at images of 1930s Italian factories. Both authors possess a strong utopian streak. Their interviews with self-taught builders and caretakers in the most recent Lackluster reveal innovation where others see only eccentricity. They point out inventive uses of found materials and durable construction on a shoestring. "These things get characterized as folk art despite their functionality," says Harbison. "They serve imaginative needs as well as functional needs." Zine author Steve Mandich has a passion for investigating pop culture's flashes in the pan. He applies this passion to urban design in his single-issue, single-topic zine Monorail, which was inspired by his childhood memories of Seattle's one-mile monorail. "I'm pretty thorough about things by nature," says Mandich, whose zine features images and anecdotes of monorails across three continents and over 100 years. His capsule history is engagingly written as well as meticulous. Images of monorails and associated memorabilia help readers imagine what it must have been like to see the trains brand-new, as symbols of infrastructural progress. While Mandich mostly recalls the monorail's post--World War II glory days, he presents it as a viable transportation solution. (Seattleites seem to agree; last year, they voted to expand Mandich's beloved monorail into a full-fledged transit system.) One of the most ambitious zines is the intrepid Dodge City Journal (DCJ ). Each of its hefty issues reports on the current state of several cities and towns around the U.S.; the most recent one features Cleveland (and Parma); Oakland, California; and Portland, Maine. Editor Stephanie Ray calls DCJ "urban documentary," and many of its stories do have the feel of documentary films. Authors and photographers make their way through commercial strips and residential neighborhoods, chatting up the locals in an effort to understand how these places work. A common theme is people's pride of place, or lack of it. Writing about her trip to Baton Rouge, Ray notes that no one there could understand why she had wanted to visit. DCJ addresses many familiar issues of urban planning, but it treats them in the context of individuals' lives. "If you talk to people about zoning and demographics, it's inherently boring," opines Ray. "But they respond to stories about people and culture." If a widespread, popular literature of the built environment is to reappear in this country, it will likely follow that prescription. |
Keywords:
Lackluster, Dodge City Journal, Monorail
