the modernist city

It is in the modernist  industrial city  (Fordism) that the  representations of the city come to the fore,  in the sense that photography, cinema, print, and advertising  shaped  the way our senses  experience modern life through images. If visuality becomes integral to our knowledge of  and practice in urban society  in the 29th century, then it is  cinema, which  has the  prominent role in inserting visuality in the experience of modern life in Australia. 

As is well known, these representations of the  new urban experience celebrated the daily life of the street  as the stage for the chaotic energy of the traffic, the swirling maelstrom of the crowd; the clockwork-like rhythm of daily life as thousands of workers and office-goers entered and exited their corporate workspaces at regular hours.

Adelaide, of course,  was a late developer as  a modernist city. 

Modernist  architecture, in the form of corporate office office blocks,  only started being inserted within  the fabric of  the 19th century mercantile city after 1945 with the emergence of industrialisation. Adelaide's  street life was minimal,  and the photographic representations of the experience of  the modernist city are lost and forgotten. Sydney was the modernist epicentre  of Australia. 

There are  good examples of modernist architecture in Adelaide  as Stuart  Symon's walking tours in the CBD  highlight.