Southwest ACSA_Preceedings _96 Section_3.4 Google Street View and the transition from the unknown to the known Mike Christenson North Dakota State University Introduction: The everyday landscape Isolated examples of the term everyday landscape appear in nineteenth-century literature but the term only takes on a polemical value in the twentieth century with the work of writers such as Robert Venturi and J. B. Jackson. 1 Where the nineteenth- century everyday landscape was a background for important events, Venturi’s became a provocative source of inspiration; Jackson “discovered” an otherwise- ignored vernacular landscape from the vantage of his motorcycle. As the Venturian understanding of the everyday landscape is still operational today – the theme of the present conference session is an obvious example of its persistence – we need to identify the factors which contribute to identifying a particular building or environment as part of the everyday landscape. Both Venturi and Jackson support the notion that if we want to ind the everyday 3.4 1. Main Avenue, Fargo, North Dakota, photographed prior to Google Street View. Source: author.