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nuances, interwoven, ambiguous and contestedexperiences. There is a strong .sense of this volumebeing a very long time through press, as edited volumescan be. There is a lot of new work, e.speciaUy that fromthe boundaries of anthropology and cross-culturalhistories, of the past four years or so which does notfeature in contributors' bibliographies and would havemade a substantial difference to their arguments.

As I have suggested, there is some interesting materialin this volume at the case study level and it deserves tobe read for those. However it doesn't add much to ourunderstanding overall, its theoretical ground is all toofamiliar - despite the editors' best efforts in theintroduction to loosen the stranglehold of certainanalytical grids {or indeed gridlock). At one level it israther predictable and pedestrian and mostcontributors start off by telling us exactly the samething, that photographs were the result of western racialand cultural assumptions. Nonetheless the volumeincludes some rich and unusual material ably handledand meriting attention. It is not the kind of volumethat stands reading as a whole, there are too manyunevennesses for that, but as single essays many ofthem are a welcome addition to the literature.

The Familiar and the Unfamiliar in Twentieth-Century Architectureby Jean La MarcheUtbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003. 232 pages,67 photographs, 22 line drawingsISBN 0-252-02785-X $34.95Re\'iew by Jerome Krase, Brooklyn College, The CityUniversity of New York

If we imagine a book as though it were a building, anarchitecture of ideas and visions, then I would say thatJean La Marche has designed and executed in TheFamiliar and the Unfamiliar in Twentieth-CenturyArchitecture a structure of modest size yet elegantproportion. It is a fascinating blending of written andvisual texts, which engages the viewer via concepts andpractices with which I must admit I was not wellacquainted. Quite frankly a few were totally new to mesuch as 'the familiar and the avant-garde practice ofdefatniliarization' (cover). Understanding and using thefamiliar is relatively easy to understand but the prarticeof defamiliarization, or making the familiar seemstrange in order to enhance our perception of thefamiliar is not. The related concepts of the familiar anddefamiliarization are carefully employed to consider,

and for some of us reconsider, some of the mostimportant architectural artefacts ofthe last century. Byviewing western architecture from the perspective of thearchitectural subject, or the person that architectsimagine will be affected by the concrete expressions oftheir own imaginations we learn in a different wayabout the relationship between people and places. LaMarche carefully examines the writings and buildings offour of the most important and well-known architectsof the past century. 1 am grateful that he chose thosewith whom I have at least a passing sociologicalacquaintance, as architecture and urban planning areimportant aspects of my own training in urban andcommunity sociology: Frank Lloyd Wright, LeCorbusier, Aldo Rossi, and the partnership of RobertVenturi and Denise Scott Brown. There is quite a longhistory of connections between sociology andarchitecture. It is most often expressed today in thediscipline of Environmental Sociology. Long beforethat, urban sociologists of my generation were exposedto the theoretical and practical ideas of Georg Simmeland Jacob Riis. In contrast to sociology's group orsocietal orientation toward the built environment. LaMarche's attention is directed more at the individualpsychological, perhaps social psychological level. Helooks closely at the person and production of eacharchitect in four chapters. Special attention is paid toan analysis of their early writings and selectivearchitecture of each individual and/or their firm. In theprocess. La Marche reveals critical assumptions thatthey held about how they envisioned their works to beexperienced by their imagined subjects. He also skilfullyconnects concurrent relevant texts, which the architectswrote, to the buildings they were designing. In doingso, La Marche allows us to understand the four in amore comprehensive way. This idea is rather standardfor the study of architecture. In the preface to his text,American Architecture, Leland M. Roth writes'Previously, I suggested a parallel between building andpolitics, for both are based on the tine art ofcompromise. Every building represents a judiciousbalance between conflicting needs and aspirations onthe part of the client, the architect, and the builder'(2001: 9). However, nowhere in the index of thatstandard textbook could I find the terms'defamiliarization', 'familiar', or the 'iinfomiliar'.Seeking help, I surfed the Net and found an essay byRicardo L. Castro who informed me thatdefamiliarization derives from 'The principles advancedby the Russian Formalists in the 1920s to examine anddifferentiate art from non-art in general, and moreparticularly literature from non-literature. Ultimately

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what this means is that it is possible and desirable tobreak apart from the established dotnitiatit cations bycanonizing something new which in turn will beeventually questioned and displaced. Art andarchitecture as art are in constant evolution andreadjustment' (Castro 1988). The purpose of LaMarche's smartly illustrated work is not simply tounderstand a select group of seminal architects, but toconnect them to what he believes are some of the mostimmediate and important issues of late twentieth-century architectural theory. I might add that theseissues have considerable currency in my own field ofurban and community sociology. By looking at how themeaning of the familiar and the unfamiliar arc alteredwhen we imagine the influence architecture can have onits subjects. La Marche outlines a framework forrecognizing and perhaps better understanding thepolitics and ethics of his discipline, and my own. Forthe visual sociologist especially, his plainly logicalwritten discourse is enhanced by a wonderfitl collectionof pbotograpbs, plans, and illustrations. Here I mustnote my professional envy at the care tbat architecturalpublishers take in weaving written text with images asopposed to tbe treatment of images in most sociologicalbooks and journals. I am reminded that my own 'best'works bave been produced in architecture, planning,and design journals {Krase 1993, 2002). Architecture,after all, is also art; a visual art where objects and thepeople who use them and are affected by tbem must befirst imagined.

It is obvious tbat Jean La Marche's The Familiar and theUnfamiliar in Twentieth-Century Architecture bas greatvalue for those in his own discipline and specialization'sbut it is also an important contribution for visual andnon visual sociologists interested in the relationshipbetween human beings and tbe spaces wbich tbey useand occupy. It reminds us, for example, that people andthe plans that are drawn up for them are intimatelyconnected even before the structure is built or tbe plansput into place. We can study tbe arcbitects, and byextension the society which creates tbem, to get a bettersense of both the meaning and practical consequencesof tbe tbings they construct. Allow me now to fashion amore detailed review and to extract frotTi tbe text tboseaspects of the volume that might be of special interestto sociologists of the visual kind. La Marcbe writes thatdefamiliarization was of interest throughout the lastcentury, especially in early modernist architecture, aswork focused on the 'shock of the new'. Tbe new wasviewed as a means of cultural transformation anddefamiliarization 'arose automatically when architectscarefijUy attended to certain convictions about

"economy of means" and produced an architecturefocused on the honest expression of structure,materials, and functions and not on tbe styles of tbepast. The strategy of defamiliarization was important ifarchitecture was to be relevant and appropriate to theage' (5). La Marche emphasizes tbat modernistsbelieved that architecture had the power 'to shape ourvalues, ideas, aesthetic preferences, and even they waywe think and imagine' (5). They aiso thought that thearchitecture of tbe past was an obstruction tosensibilities necessary for the modern era: 'It wasimportant, therefore, to present tbe cbaracteristics ofthe new age in architecture, even if they were shockingto people' (5). He then follows by a chapter on each ofthe arcbitects, and or their firms, and reveals bow tbeirtexts and works implicitly or explicitly evidence interestin defamiliarization, or the familiar, Tbis makes itpossible to best understand the subject that tbearchitects imagine in their work. The approach offersnew perspectives on architecture and its criticisms aswell as 'tbe politics and ethics of tbe discipline witbthese concerns in tiiind' (11).

'Given his belief in the organic, historical era, FrankLloyd Wright, believed that the machines' effect onvisual preferences was inevitable.' ... 'Modernindividuals, according to Wrigbt, were developing anew sense of spaces, new capabilities, and newsensibilities' - related to rise of democracy architectureshould '"orient" subjects to new principal truths' suchas 'bonest expression ofand freedom' ... 'A newarcbitecture would belp "adjust" or accommodate thesubject to the new and unfamiliar - yet liberatingpotential of tbe New World' (16). Wright feh thattransparency was an essential condition for ademocratic society, and tbat tbe sovereignty of theindividual eliminated the difference between inside andoutside. Arcbitecture, he argued should portray theindividual as though they were portraits of his clients.His architecture, focused on seeing and moving,removing barriers, given open spaces, andtransparencies, made possible experience of freedom inboth vision and movement. His arcbitecture alsoreflected a romantic vision of individual Americansliving in a democratic society, a society tbat bisarchitecture would belp create and support. Of specialnote to visual sociologists, be believed that'Photographs do not adequately present the subjects.A building has a presence, as bas a person, thatdefies tbe photographer, and the color so necessaryto the complete expression of the form is lacking'(26, 35).

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Le Corbusier differed from Frank Lloyd Wright in thathe wanted to make the strange familiar. He promoted anew spirit and new visual interests and saw a centralproblem in the alienation between work and hotne.Seeking to address this problem he argued that thearchitect's task is make the tiew and strange fiitniliarand create and support the new spirit. He also positedthat the modern subject was split between the highersatisfaction of the mind and the lower sensorial. Hepreferred the higher, which was 'expressed inmathematics and the calculated aspects of architecture-proportion, scale, functional rationality, and the spatial,temporal and formal changes made possible by the newtechnologies' (40—41). The physical image of the humanbeing was important to him as he maintained ananthropocentric perspective in his work. La Marchenotes the contradictions in his attentions and his work,which claimed a universal subject but was often esotericand privileged the intellectual over the brute sensations.Le Corbusier wanted harmony between body and mindbut favoured the mind and those who were able toappreciate it - therefore expressed in his work as'hermetic and cryptically inaccessible' (55). His leaningswere Classical, but he understood that the past wasdemonstrated by symmetry, rhythm, and proportionwhile the present was dominated by the pragmaticarrangement of things. As a result, his work created adialectic - a clash which made the two obvious. Onevisual method for accomplishing this was having thesubject move through space, a promenade, on whichthe subject would be presented with the coexistence oftwo histories and dialectical possibilities and thus thepossibility of synthesis, if the modern subject could 'see'this he/she could experience the mathematicalcorrespondence between the body and the cosmos,subject and the universe.

For Rossi, architecture was intended to be familiar yethis work is often criticized as being surreal. He wantedto use the familiar as a basis for a new architecture thatcould invite life and evoke memories and associationsto counteract alienation and coldness. However heseemed to have made the familiar strange (77). Becausehe was interested in the collective, he stressed thedialectic between the people and their environment, butlater returned to himself as the subject of his work.'Rossi intended his architecture to he sympathetic tocollective experiences by repeating types thatrepresented common and familiar forms of life - to"invite life"' (74). La Marche shows that he saw type asa constant, which reflected a collective memory or will.Rossi studied architecture in history in order to findtypes, but despite trying to be objective he became the

subject of his own work. This is not as much as acontradiction in that he believed the collective subjectwas universally shared and that everyone was capable of'seeing' in the same way as others (63).

Venturi, like Rossi, was caught up in autobiogiaphy inhis early work. La Marche notes that he assumed the roleof historical interpretation and used the familiar toexpress this, to address the 'mediated sensibilities of late20th century culture' (78). Venturi sought to create a'difficult whole' which includes rather than excludes.Such would be an architecture of complexity andcontradiction. 'The complexity of contemporaryarchitectural interests as well as those of the individualsubject and the emerging global culture could also beunderstood by means of this tnodel. Under theseconditions, tbe architect's main responsibility consistedof providing "the organization of a unique wholethrough conventional parts and the judiciousintroduction of new parts" (Venturi 1979: 88), the mix ofwhich would appeal to diverse interests in a complexunity' (La Marche 2003: 81). La Marche continued thatthe difficult whole consists of binaries, whicb couldmaintain an intricate equilibrium of diverse interests,even good and bad space, and gave examples from'Learning from Las Vegas' such as double functioning ofvestigial elements (81). America of the late 20th centurywas diverse and had plural interests so Venturi sought topromote an accommodating sensibility by using theopposition of familiar and unfamiliar to create newmeanings for the whole. La Marche demonstrates thatVenturi thought that the new subjects had interests in thevisual tensions presented by pop artists. Therefore theyused visual methods 'to disrupt habits of visi<ins' (91).Venturi and Associates had a strong visual focus thatpresented buildings as sculpture, or as a thing itself, thebest example of whicb was 'the Duck' (93). They wantedto retrieve the ability of buildings to carry signs andthereby to connect with popular culture, and the newsubjects and their sensibilities. For them populararchitecture was to be easily legible (94). Despite thishowever some critics called them elitist.

At the end of these four well argued, illustrated, anddocutiiented chapters. La Marcbe summarizes andsynthesizes them and is able to eveti more confidentlyrestate his thesis that 'The idea of the familiar and theunfamiliar takes on new meaning when we examine thepossibilities of architecture's influence on its subjects'(115). He then continues that the issue is far more complex:

Nonetheless, we can conclude that thearchitects whose work we have examined herehave offered us a wide range oi ideas about the

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subject and iti the process, about the naturesand purposes of architecture in relation to it.The itnagined subject of architecture isprojected and hailed. It is shocked by the newand grounded by the familiar. It is split.complex, imbalanced, moving, multiple, anderased. It is free or dialectical, a single readerand, at least partly, collective in nature. Itexperiences presence and absence by means ofthe body and the eye as complex andinterdependent modes of experience oftencorrelated with association and memory. Theintentiotis of the architects we have examinedare to balance or integrate it, to ground it, orto shock and defamiliarize it. (115)

It is impossible to disagree that the questions thatemerge from his work call for subject research inarchitecture, and by extension in environmental andvisual sociology. By looking for the subjects thatarchitects (and others) imagine in their work we canbetter understand their ideas. Up to the present in thisreview I have been trying to faithfully present the ideasof La Marche and his presentations of four architectswith whom I have some familiarity as both a studentand a subject of their work. 1 shall conclude with someremarks that gently suggest an expansion, perhaps asynthesis, of the object-subject relation in botharchitecture and in sociology.

My own orientation in sociology is to take the positionof the ordinaiy person who must manage his/her lifewithin the architectures of the contemporary world.Therefore my bias is toward J. B. Jackson's vernaculararchitectures and landscapes. One recent case in pointmight suffice as pause for thought. 1 have for manyyears been a devotee of Frank Lloyd Wright'sarcbitecture, large (buildings) and small (furniture), inmany places in the United Sates. I was honoured tohave spent a day in one of his buildings in Buffalo NewYork while a member ofthe New York State council forthe Humanities. I was thrilled by the aestheticexperience of moving through the spaces he designedfor subjects like me. In Australia this past summer, thefirst Wright critic I ever met accosted me. He was acontractor who had a franchise on a special reglazingproduct for bathtubs. 1 had commented on how much Iappreciated the Wrightian 'Prairie Style' homes in greatevidence on the continent. I was then the astoundedrecipient of an architectural critique most foul. It seetnsthat Wright never having thought how hard it would befor his subject to clean a house with 'all those nooksand crannies'. My own modest critiques of architectsand architecture are less obscene but equally mundane.

FIGURE 1, "i feel this way about it. World trade means wotid peace andconsequently the World Trade Center buildings in New York... had abigger purpose than just to provide room for tenants. The World TradeCenter is a living symbol of man's dedication to world peace,,, beyondthe compelling need to make tbis a monument to world peace, tbeWorld Trade Center sbould, because of its importance, become arepresentation of man's belief in humanity, his need for individualdignity, his beliefs in the cooperation of men, and tbrough cooperation,his ability to find greatness," Mmoru Yamasaki(httpy/www,greatbuildings,com/buildingsA'Vorld_Trade_Center,html)

It seems that the persons, or others, who are imaginedby Wright. Le Corbusier, Rossi, and Venturi wereseldom the kinds of people I know. My interest inarchitecture has been focused on the vernacular, whichincludes the ways that ordinary people change themeanings, and the intended uses of even the most high-minded and powerful of architects. I have beenobserving and photographing the ways that ordinarypeople create, perhaps distort, the intended, meaningsof intended space. The most powerful instance of thisin New York City is Ground Zero. The World TradeCenter was created with a particular subject in mindand constructed with a particular intention. OnSeptember 11, 2001, it was destroyed by fanatics and isnow being fought over by designers, developers, andpoliticians. While this symbolic, political, and

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ultimately economic battle is taking place the 'empty'space has been appropriated by street peddlers andperused by the mostly morbidly curious. Even in thiscontext 'The idea of the familiar atid tbe unfamiliartakes on new meaning wben we examine thepossibilities of architecture's influence on its subjects',whether intended or not (see Figure 1).

REFERENCESCastro, Kicardo L. 1988, "Architecture and defamiliarization,"

Available online at http://www.arch.mcgill.ca/prof/castro/serlio/defam.htm [accessed 3 December 2003].

Krase, Jerome. 1993. "Traces of Home," Places: A Quarterlyloiirnal of Environmental Design 8(4): 46-55.. 2002. "Navigating ethnic vernacular landscapes thenand now," Journal of Architecture and Planning Research19{4): 274-281.

Roth, Lcland M. 2001. American Architecture: a History.Boulder: Westview Press.

Venturi, Robert. 1979. Complexity and Contradiction. NewYork: Museum of Modern Art.

History After Apartheid: Visual Culture and PublicMemory in a Democratic South Africaby Annie E. CootiibesDurbam and London: Duke University Press, 2003,366 pagesISBN 0-8223-3072-5 $27.95 paperbackReview by Darren Newbury. Birmingham Institute ofArt and Design, University of Central England

In tbe past 15 years South Africa bas undoubtedlyundergone 'one of the most startling periods of politicaland social transformation in recent history' (1). The aitnof History After Apartheid is to analyse howrepresentations of home, community and nation invarious forms of public visual culture, from museumdisplay to fine art, have 'dramatized the tensions involvedin sucb a momentous shift wbile at the same timecontributing to the process of transformation itself (1).The book focuses on developments in public visualculture and museum display in tbe period from tbe late19a0s through to 2000. This means that some more recentdevelopments such as the Apartheid Museum at GoldReef City (opened 2001) and the Hector PietersonMuseum in Soweto (opened in 2002) are not discussed.This is an observation rather than a criticism of the book,whose focus is essentially on the period in wbich changewas being anticipated, planned for and argued over, andsubsequently implemented. It provides a series offascinating and well-documented case studies of public

monuments, museums, special exhibitions, and examplesof contemporary fine art.

Chapter one focuses on the fate of apartheidmonuments in the post-apartheid era, which contrastswitb tbe fate of monuments and symbols in other partsof the world during periods of social and politicaltransformation, notably Eastern Europe after tbecollapse of tbe Soviet Union. The fate of publicsculpture and monuments in South Africa .since the endof apartheid has been less dramatic, but is probably themore interesting for that. Eocusing primarily on theVoortrekker Monutnent, Coombes asks 'How is itpossible for black constituencies to simply accept theco-existence of sucb an oppressive reminder ofapartheid?' (23). She draws our attention to some of tbeanswers that circulated in the early 1990s when thisdebate was at its peak - 'disinterest', 'strategicdisavowal' (23) and 'lessons from tbe past' (20). Sbealso notes the disingenuous assertion of cultural rightson behalf of Afrikaner nationalism (34). Her ownanswer is based on tbe idea of translation: there-positioning through engagement and perfortnancetbat offers an alternative to wholesale removal from tbevisual landscape. Aside firom straightforward critique ofthe narrative the monument represents, Coombesargues tbat, for example, tbe visit of prominent blackpublic figures, or tbe monument's use as a backdrop forpornography, counter balance its significance as asymbol of Afrikaner nationalistii and a rallying pointfor rigbt-wing Afrikaner groups. Thus 'domesticat[ed]'(53) and uncoupled from tbe economic and politicalpower that sustained its ideology it becomes ananomaly, open to appropriation; it appears, asCoombes so wonderfully describes it, 'like somemisplaced Bakelite radio' (28).

Chapters two and three concentrate respectively onRobben Island Museum (see Eigures 1 and 2) andDistrict Six Museum. Having recently visited bothmuseums myself, the difference is striking. RohbenIsland Museum, as Coombes points out, is oriented, atleast in part, to a tourist market. Visitors are subject tothe kind of processing tbat many international touristswill recognize, despite tbe fact that, at least on theoccasion I was there, this was rather unevenly managed,and the commercialism itself ratber uncotnmitted. 1agree with Coombes that tbe comparison with Alcatrazis a problematic one, that '"slick professionalism" andsensearound simulacra come at a cost', and that a 'low-tecb' approach can encourage a 'more intimate andreflective experience' (72-73), but perhaps part of thereason the comparison remains compelling for some