The Automobile has a strong impact on its environment: roads, car parks, dedicated structures such as petrol stations, houses, and cities as a whole.
The architect, whose skills are highly respected, is in charge of many of these fields. Architects have also often wanted to create a car for the city and the home, in an environment that was often imagined.
“The architecture of a car” describes how its components are arranged within the overall volume.
The slogan “voitures à vivre” (cars for living) draws a parallel with the way we live in a house. Indeed, children’s most insistent request is to have a toilet in the car.
In his “Obus” plan, Le Corbusier proposed a huge continuous building 12 kilometres long along the seafront of Algiers, in Algeria, whose roof would have served as a motorway.
In 1929, Arne Jacobsen presented the “house of the future”, which had three garages for three means of transport: car, boat and helicopter. The organic spiral shape of the house was described as “a machine for living”.
The interaction between the Automobile and its environment is a fascinating and very broad field that has attracted some of the greatest names in design and architecture.
Rochet-Schneider aims to understand the motivations and ambitions behind these approaches.
Do you know an interesting site?
A site (garage, petrol station, building, bridge, car park, etc.) where architecture and the automobile meet and converse, for better or for worse? Tell us about it: the most remarkable ones will join this page and may become the subject of a project.
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Every new adventure needs a manifesto:
“We declare our wish to look far beyond the car itself to explore its environment.”