The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space

Part I: Filters
M. Christine Boyer
able to simulate that world. Such simulation required an apparatus or technician
to create such special effects and to demonstrate the extent of human
control over physical reality. Wonder had been transformed from acknowledging
the perfection of draughtsmanship or a particular scenographer’s
theatrical skills, as was admitted in front of a spectacular panorama, to the
instrumental ability of mechanical techniques to produce an appearance of
reality. Immersed in illusory effects, the spectator lost the sense of being in
a constructed world. 55
The same dynamic seems to be at work in contemporary Times
Square, whose simulated arrangements have produced an ontological confusion
in which the original story has been forgotten and no longer needs to
be told. Simulation, which plays on this shifting of ground, is enhanced
when an unstable relation exists between representation and experience.
Times Square, by now, is known only through its representations, its sign
systems, its iconic cinematic presence; and pleasure is derived from experiencing
the illusion of the Great White Way, by marveling at its Lutses, by
planning its unplannedness, by foregrounding the apparatus that produces
these manipulated representations. Since the need for realistic representation
that provides a cognitive map of unknown terrain has declined, the
pressure to offer simulation as a twice-told story increases. Now the narra-
2.6 | “42nd Street Now!” Robert A. M. Stern’s Theme Park Vision.