Paradise Lost

Mark Campbell

This book explores the notion of architectural obsolescence through a study of the contemporary United States. While the US was the world’s greatest economic, scientific and cultural force during the twentieth century, it now appears to be obsessed with its own decline. In this obsession the changing patterns of consumption and demand often result in an architectural redundancy where buildings exist as a form of by-product or residue. While our stereotypical image of the US reflects the heroic potential of production, this book examines the opposite – of that which isn’t work. Or, more pointedly, those abandoned pleasures and lost paradises that remain when there is no longer any work left to define them.