Session 10 - 04.12.09 U.S.A by John Dos Passos

So my thoughts on U.S.A...

That’s more like it! Following last weeks cheese fest that was The Fountainhead, it’s nice to get back to a good old fashioned, just telling it like it is, no fancy trimmings, no nice endings, book showing the tragedy of success.

The mini biographies within U.S.A are insightful glimpses into the lives of some of the most famous individuals from the turn of the century. The way Henry Ford, after helping create the world of the automobile, chooses in the end to hide away from it all. He spent the money he earned from manufacturing a world of motor cars, to build a world where the cars didn’t exist. He rebuilt his childhood farm, he praised the obsolete models of transport he himself had made obsolete and he moved roads away from buildings he owned. Why would he do this? Had he seen the tragedy of his life’s work, the pollution and tarmac that was covering everything in its path? Or had he simply had enough of it all, grown sick of the monster of the motor run world he had helped to create.

Do architects follow the same kind of pattern? I know that after three and a half years of designing Sainsbury’s car parks and clad sheds I am already sick of the sight of supermarkets, to point where I will do anything but go and shop in them.