ABSTRACT
In the South African ‘homeland’ of Bophuthatswana the international hotel group Sun International has constructed an archaeological site (Figs 1.1-4). The Lost City is modelled on a ruin, imagined as destroyed three thousand years ago. The architecture of this resort is a study in post-modernist image play. Behind the design is a myth, concocted by the Lost City’s California-based design team, which has a nomadic tribe journeying from northern Africa to a secluded valley in modern-day Bophuthatswana. Steadily, they built a rich civilization, only to have their city destroyed by an earthquake. Three thousand years later this lost valley was discovered by an explorer who vowed to restore it to its original splendour. Gerald Allison, the principal architect, claims that the myth, like the City, is pure fantasy, although ‘colored by the heritage of Africa’ (pers. comm. 1992). But elsewhere I have argued that there is nothing new about the myth at all-it is simply a modern rendering of a European notion of Africa that can be traced back through many centuries of European fantasy (Hall 1993).
