“You are in the midst of a crowd of people meandering through lively streets, alleys and open piazzas. On all sides are stores, cinemas and cafes, in vivid buildings with dazzling signs; around you are colorful stalls and push-carts, fountains and trees. There is a cacophony of sounds emanating from all directions; there are mime artists and street performers. It’s chaotic, vibrant and loud. Where are you? You are in public space, Jerde-style.”
Frances Anderton, You Are Here, 1999
GHOSTED: THE HORTON PRINCIPLE
Postmodern California As Ruin?
In our contemporary moment, an era where “high” technology has redefined our public and private lives, we are haunted by once-and-future ghosts. The post-Cold War era, according to many here in the United States and in the “West” as a moment of jubilation, was meant to signal not only the defeat of communism but also a confirmation of our capacity to triumph, an echo that originated from the Second World War and its stunning reshaping of the globe.
Jon Jerde’s Horton Plaza, this now decaying urban mall, was conceived at this very moment as the United States demonstrated to the world that its form of consumer capitalism was the Word and would persevere. Its ruins may yet serve as a living testament to something larger than its stuccoed surfaces and historical silhouettes. Horton Plaza didn’t appear at some random time; the Cold War was about to be won, bringing with it the end of the 20th century. As Norman M. Klein has observed, “[t]he twentieth century ended in 1989, once the wall came down.” But the debate about what actually happened then and what it means now is still alive and well.
It is now 2019: nearly two decades after the dot-com bust, thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, San Diego, celebrating its 250th anniversary, is planning to tear down Horton Plaza and to replace it with something called The Campus at Horton, a proposed tech campus with a mix of fashionable restaurants and hip amenities. But where will it move us? Will the campus have “enthusiasm” in Ray Bradbury’s terms — a quality of openness and playfulness that he very much admired in Jon Jerde’s work? At this juncture we should ask ourselves two important questions about these urban reconfigurations: what, exactly, are we destroying; and what are we intending to build in its place? San Diego may very well be a bellwether of how these issues will play out on a national and, perhaps, global(ized) landscape. Yet these questions have not yet been asked of our larger city community.
Jon Jerde’s own answer to the question of historical time, in the form of Horton Plaza, is hardly “satisfying.” Like all great Postmodern projects, it is polyvocal and contradictory, and asks more questions than it answers; this may be why it was always controversial, and continues to be so. Quotations mix with unique ideas; reproductions of past styles combine with bold new architectural gestures; copies and originals blend together. There is no easy formula regarding the plaza’s legacy: already in Jerde’s plans for the project, the pragmatic and the spiritual mix in ways that fundamentally challenge our rationales for its redevelopment. This exhibition seeks to use those different voices and registers to activate our local memories and imagination about Horton Plaza’s historical legacy, as a supplement to the kinds of practical considerations that, while necessary, never fully account for the poetic and spiritual dimensions of urban space.
