Arizona’s Big Surf is one of those projects that belong to the era of post-war boosterism and the unassailable self-confidence of an Arcadian dream. However, four years prior to its opening in 1969 it was just an idea — plus a 30x40 foot wave tank built by construction engineer Phil Dexter. Today we take artificial wave beaches more or less for granted, but at the time Dexter’s Big Surf ranked along with the best of the arid land utopias conjured out of a barren wilderness: Taliesin, Biltmore, Arcosanti. Under the wide aegis of the city of Phoenix, Big Surf adds its own form of Waikiki picturesque into the alchemy of surf culture, water engineering, and the notion of a truly endless summer.
When Big Surf first opened it boasted a five-foot wave every minute, but over the years the waves have become smaller and less regular, perhaps synonymous with its diminishing status among many of today’s grander artificial wave systems. Of course, surfers can still appreciate its magnitude; the system’s pumps draw 50,000 gallons of water into giant cisterns within the wall, and when the wave comes it is triggered in booming flush as gates opens and the wave forms over a concrete baffle below the water line.
»Big Surf adds its own form of Waikiki picturesque into the alchemy of surf culture, water engineering, and the notion of a truly endless summer.«
Jason Griffiths is an architect and writer. He is Assistant Professor at the Herberger Institute, Arizona State University, Pheonix, Arizona. His work investigates the relationship between popular culture and architecture. Both his teaching and creative work explore digital fabrication techniques, investigating contemporary vernacular forms of building.
Jason has exhibited and published widely including in the AA Files, Architecture, JA, JAE and the Sunday Times. His book Manifest Destiny: A Guide to the Essential Indifference of American Suburban Housing was published in 2011 by AA Publications. It provides a visual anthropology of the North American suburbs and won the Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM) book award (Typology) at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
But the kick isn’t what it used to be. Veterans of Big Surf talk about “back in the day...when it had sand…a break to the left and the right….” with deep affection for its original mechanical nuances. This sounds similar to the typical talk of San Diego surfers — but this is affection for a machine! When you go to Big Surf you don’t become one with the infinite ocean, but instead commune with a mechanical wave beneath a giant painted sunset. Trips to Big Surf are an odd rite of passage for the modern surfer, a simulacra of the kind naturalism that surfers seek out. While today Big Surf’s artificial version of surf culture is no longer a technological novelty it will always be the first. It’s allure is a nostalgic one, the nostalgia for an original piece of faded Americana.
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