Ed Soja – The Postmodern City / Bonaventure Hotel

34 thoughts on “Ed Soja – The Postmodern City / Bonaventure Hotel”

1. The Bonaventure was fantastic!There was a great Japanese restaurant where I took my date who was a double for Sean Young in Bladerunner.But,when I got to L.A. in 1982,I was staying at a dive hotel near the Greyhound station where a guy got murdered in the lobby on the third night I was there.I`d go up to the Bonaventure and hang out in there,often writing songs in those gondola shaped seats while colorful Mariachis walked around on the main floor and played some great guitar!However the best event I went to there was the Beatlefest and I bought a Beatle t-shirt.Man,that place was something else!

2. I accidentally wondered into The Bonaventure via a sky bridge while exploring Los Angeles as a teenager and thought I was in a dream. It is to this day the most breathtaking architectural experience I have ever had.

3. where can I find the whole programme for this?

4. Jesus Christ! What over-the-top over-analysis of just a building. It's OK to like it, or not like it – I live in an urban village situation and realize the advantages of it, but ever since I was a kid – seeing Logan's Run (the buildings weren't the villains) and visiting Tomorrowland – I had an affection for this "Let's be futuristic" architecture. I think it has its place, and can be amazing at times. Maybe you won't want to stay there all the time, but a building that I CHOOSE to enter being "oppressive" and making me want to submit? Asinine.

5. Periferalised in these [post modern] spaces. And the way you accomodate yourself to them and the way you survive in them, is essentially to submit to forms of oversee, social control, authority. Which is invisable, by the way, because part of being lost is that even when you are willing to submit to authority, you can't find it!

6. or is becoming lost a challenge to people to overcome it on their own accord or by getting help from others? does it form a hierarchy necessarily?

7. r.i.p Ed

8. One important issue is the spatial organization of the postmodern city and how we are led to submit to its controls as well as to its charms, a castle city in which bodies of people are controlled. The B Hotel reflects the very nature of the postmodern experience both figuratively and literarily, the outside of the building reflects the enormous growth of a postmodern town. A kind of carceral, a city of international capital and corporate capital within the US as well of local capital global capital. A new city, a new downtown for LA has not had a well-develop downtown over the years, as I said it also reflects a postmodern experience internally as well the B has become a focal for the debate of postmodernism ever since its discovery of a postmodern hyperspace by Fred Jameson. The landscape of B hotel is highly fragmented, it’s a space that dissenters you, makes you feel lost, and you feel your only recourse is to submit to authority, you’re helpless, you’re made helpless, you’re lost in these spaces, and the way you accommodate yourself to them and they way you survive in them is essentially to submit two forms of overseeing social control, authority- often invisible, by the way, because part of being lost, even when you are willing to submit to authority you can’t find it.

   The postmodernity of the B Hotel is not in its shell. Stylistically the architects would insist is not postmodern in style but instead late modern or modernist in some form. It’s difficult to find the main entrance. The pedestrian entrance is hidden in a concrete bunker that makes one feel this couldn’t possibly be the entrance to a major hotel. Most of the entrances are fly-over and walk-ways in the sky connected to other parts of the postmodern downtown of LA, where one gets equally lost trying to move around. One enters the building and one sees a bastille like a fortress that consists of a series of columns amidst them some funny little gondolas, the external elevators going up and down, presumably showing the outside is inside and vice-versa. The elevators themselves are indicators of the strange spaces that one is going to find in maneuvering and traversing the inside of the hotel. There are shops that receive no customers, largely because the customers can’t find them. People walking around totally lost not knowing how to get in or out of the rooms that are presumably the refuge of their confusion. You walk into one entrance that seems the major entrance and to get to anywhere else you find you are blocked by elevator shafts, sitting spaces, concrete chairs that encourage you to sit down and enjoy the space, but those chairs are always empty. No one could possible feel particularly relaxed in this internal space. The feeling that you have is this feeling of dislocation.

   We must develop a new way of understanding spatiality of postmodernism. If we are going to resist its very attractive lures, post modernity is not the construction of simple worlds of fantasy but it is the production of hyper-reality that is more real than reality itself. It’s a reality that has tremendous attractions to it There is a lot of things inside this microcosm of the B Hotel are attractive and ultra-engaging. You see inside the B Hotel a complex mirror of reflection of the very nature of postmodern society and postmodern experience.

9. "hotel"
   cringe
   This is the kind of stuff that I make sure not to go into

10. The first time I ever saw the Bonaventure, I was in awe. I've been there many times now. I've never once felt lost or disconnected. All of the signage is very clear and the building is simply beautiful inside and out. Another John Portman masterpiece just like the RenCen!!

11. RIP Ed!

12. Shout out to Prof Deb!!!! <3

13. Wow. Much geography. Very ggr.

14. They used this hotel in Invasion of the Bodysnatchers with Donald Sutherland.

15. If this interview is any indicator, Soja has made a career out of holding forth extensively on positions that are exceedingly hazy. Slap the phrase post-modern in there and I guess you get tenure in an academic post.

16. It's strangely calming to know that one of the canonical texts on postmodernism is based on an old man getting lost in a hotel.

    I'm sure his daughter listens to terrible music and things just aren't as good as the were when he was your age.

17. I'm Fredric Jameson bitch!

18. I love the part where he says people get lost and dislocated and can't find the shops, it's brilliant.

19. at some points I think he's pushing the "postmodern" mold too hard.

20. thanks for posting this

21. @avant1277 It underwent a major renovation earlier this year, so we'll see. I plan on making it fun regardless. Just going there for a couple of days to be alone. Sounds perfect doesn't it? Maybe I'll make a mockumentary while I'm there. 🙂 Think anyone would notice?

22. @avant1277 It underwent a major renovation earlier this year, so we'll see. I plan on making it fun regardless. Just going there for a couple of days to be alone. Sounds perfect doesn't it. Maybe I'll make a mockumentary while I'm there. 🙂

23. @whoitisnot awesome! maybe you can video it? maybe you can try chilling in one of the "gondolas" and see if you find it relaxing or not. how is the walk from checking in to the room? do you have to go via strange empty boutiques? do you feel lost? how are the different entrances and ways into the building? and most importantly does the inside become the outside and the outside the inside? heheh 🙂

24. I'm staying there next weekend. Not sure how exited I should be(?). I would like the *fun* part of post-modernism.

25. Edward soja is a self obsessed egotistical maniac who cant see past the walls of Los Angeles.

26. BAM

27. where can i find the full program?? thanks for this though.

28. This is wonderful. Thank you!

29. it is Bonaventure Hotel he is talking about. kool vedio!

30. Hi fellow! Great video.
    Do you know where I could find a longer version?
    Thanks!

31. Try to understand Libeskind's symbolic of emptiness. Entrance – or indifference – between emty space and close inside of hi-tech builldings is the "essence" of post-modern architecture.

32. Thank you for sharing this small diamond. Really good introduction to postmodern condition and theory.

33. maybe you may look into the idea of public space with authors like Mike Davis, Jane Jacob, and Michael Fulton for the pedestrian/mall idea

34. I've been looking for something that speaks of post-modernism and modernism placed against it – this shows nice comparative features, including the disconnection of the centre from the downtown – the lack of pedestrian access is the most interesting part – to me it separates and criticises those who wish to walk – and I wonder about how it works if you compare it with a Gruen designed shopping mall – the comparison seems to be all 'anchor' no retail tenancies with which to stimulate 'desire'.

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