Into the Void: Building the 1939 San Francisco World’s Fair

Professor Andrew Shanken

Published on the occasion of the expo’s 75th anniversary, Into the Void Pacific is the first architectural history of the 1939 San Francisco World’s Fair. While fairs of the 1930s turned to the future as a foil to the Great Depression, the Golden Gate International Exposition conjured up geographical conceits to explore the nature of the city’s place in what organizers called “Pacific Civilization.” Andrew Shanken adopts D.H. Lawrence’s suggestive description of California as a way of thinking about the architecture of the Golden Gate International Exposition, using the phrase “void Pacific” to suggest the isolation and novelty of California and its habit of looking West rather than back over its shoulder to the institutions of the East Coast and Europe.

Available from University of California Press
Part of the Berkeley Design Books Collection