Chase, John

Bio Sketch

John Chase is an architect, critic, and editor based in Los Angeles, a noted observer of the American iconic/suburban landscape and of "everyday" and "topic" architecture. His work includes the influential series of essays on consumerist and commercial vernacular architecture and co-edited volumes on suburban and "everyday urbanism" (with John Kaliski and Margaret Crawford).

Key Works

• "The Role of Consumerism in American Architecture" (1991, JAE) — consumerist architecture and the commercial vernacular.
• Co-editor of Everyday Urbanism (Roberts, Chase, Crawford, 1999) — a key text of the everyday urbanism movement.

Key Concepts

Concepts associated with this author that have pages in this wiki:

• Consumerism
• Everyday Architecture

Relevance to Geoffrey's Research

Chase matters to Geoffrey's everyday & vernacular architecture and semiotics & representation areas. His account of consumerist architecture and the commercial vernacular — direct, literal, communicative symbolism against the self-referential avant-garde — connects to the "decorated shed," Instagram architecture, and the everyday of consumer production, and to the debate over whether architecture should be communicative or critical.

Source Support

Source notes in this wiki drawn from this author's work:

• The Role of Consumerism in American Architecture
• The Influence of Local Fiscal Structure and Growth Control Choices on 'Big Box' Urban Sprawl in the American West
• Consumerism and Identity: Some Psychoanalytic Considerations