Author(s)

A. Furman

Abstract

The accumulation of space needed for our vehicles after a century of modern and postmodern planning and construction merit some review of our early fascination towards the place of the car in our homes and lifestyles. Beginning with the interior, the carport, the car, and the city itself, this paper will describe how the design of our North American dwellings focus on the automobile, and what this says about our present and future growth. Looking at some of the key voices of the early modern era, it will be demonstrated that the relationship of the automobile to domesticity was a close one, yet the larger role of the architect in the conversion of city space to facilitate flows and movement patterns that centred on the car was opportunistic and even naïve. Was the idea of ‘street’ excised from space planning in modernism so that all troubles would be solved by unimpeded access for the car? How was the presence of the car styled to effectively disappear in order to amplify the experience architecturally? Looking at some of the work and ideas of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Frank Lloyd Wright, a pattern will emerge in each architect’s approach – to respond to planned urban form with one’s own version that is publicly viewed or to keep to only a suggestion of where things might be headed, and illustrate this in your built architecture. Keywords: modernism, automobile dependency, free plan, circulation, materiality, garage, mobility, sprawl, suburbs, urban lifestyle, utopia, active transportation, ideal plan, community, panorama, architectural promenade, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright.

Keywords

Keywords: modernism, automobile dependency, free plan, circulation, materiality, garage, mobility, sprawl, suburbs, urban lifestyle, utopia, active transportation, ideal plan, community, panorama, architectural promenade, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le C