Glitter, Stucco & Dumpster Diving: Reflections on Building Production in the Vernacular City Hardcover - 2000

“An architect by training, Chase is also gaining long-overdue accolades as a historian, critic and often very funny writer.”—Los Angeles Times

“An interesting argument for further legitimizing popular architecture.”—I.D. Magazine

“Chase adeptly probes the intersecting principles that affected Los Angeles’s building design, showing, for example, how the bungalows built by developers in the 1920s aped the large period revival houses of the same decade.”—Publishers Weekly

“Chase, who has been a ‘journalist, architectural designer, critic, and Disney Imagineer,’ puts all of his skills on display in this sprawling and enjoyable tour of the Los Angelino landscape.”—Interiors Magazine

“Chase’s arguments are refreshing and challenging ... they have the advantage of understanding contemporary architecture without the pitched crisis and naïve celebration which postmodern theorizing tends to provoke.”—Fuse Magazine

“His findings reveal a fiercely democratic, if ad hoc, urbanism in which developers, homeowners, renters, retailers, pedestrians and the homeless all demarcate, and thereby create, civis place ... he spouts infectious prose and incendiary theories as easily as Dave Hickey or Mike David do to explain LA’s ever-proliferating landscape.”—Loud Paper

“Setting aside costume jewels such as the Getty Centre, los Ageles architecture—think reckless Spanish-tiled mansard genre mixing, mammoth doughnuts and L-shaped mini-malls—gets little respect in highbrow circles. Thankfully John Chase is around to defend it. Every page of his Glitter Stucco & Dumpster Driving exhales an affectionate architectural populism and a refreshing disdain for art snobs.”—LA Weekly

John Chase has worked as a journalist, architectural designer, critic and Disney Imagineer. He is currently the urban designer for the City of West Hollywood. His previous books include "Everyday Urbanism, Las Vegas: The Success of Excess" and "Exterior Decoration."