It may seem extraordinary that architects - designers of stationary objects - should concern themselves with automobile design; but the automobile has long touched architects' imaginations, appearing to them as a house on wheels, as mobile accommodation. When the motor-driven vehicle was invented, architects recognised that its image, form and function would affect the quality of people's lives and their surroundings, and that to propose an automobile was a way to perfect the synthesis of art, design and the latest technology. A number of well-known architects liked to pair the architecture of their houses with their favourite automobiles in order to illustrate the close functional and aesthetic relationship between them. Some believed that their cars had to 'look becoming to' their architecture, and included automobiles in perspective views and photographs of their completed buildings, the result being a harmonising composition of the two elements that stressed their close affinity. The celebrated 'Ten Automobiles' exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1953, with its proclamation that 'automobiles are twentieth-century artefacts', brought into focus the automobile as an influential design object. Architects realised the importance of the automobile as anicon of an era and sought not only to design motorcars but to apply the principles of automotive technology and design to their architecture. This book explores automotive design by leading architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Adolf Loos, Richard Buckminster Fuller, Gio Ponti, Carlo Mollino, Norman Foster, Jan Kaplicky and others and its influence on their architecture.

This book explores the interconnected relationship between cars and buildings

A colorful account of Le Corbusier's love affair with the automobile, his vision of the ideal vehicle, and his tireless promotion of a design that industry never embraced. Le Corbusier, who famously called a house “a machine for living,” was fascinated—even obsessed—by another kind of machine, the automobile. His writings were strewn with references to autos: “If houses were built industrially, mass-produced like chassis, an aesthetic would be formed with surprising precision,” he wrote in Toward an Architecture (1923). In his “white phase” of the twenties and thirties, he insisted that his buildings photographed with a modern automobile in the foreground. Le Corbusier moved beyond the theoretical in 1936, entering (with his cousin Pierre Jeanneret) an automobile design competition, submitting plans for “a minimalist vehicle for maximum functionality,” the Voiture Minimum. Despite Le Corbusier's energetic promotion of his design to several important automakers, the Voiture Minimum was never mass-produced. This book is the first to tell the full and true story of Le Corbusier's adventure in automobile design. Architect Antonio Amado describes the project in detail, linking it to Le Corbusier's architectural work, to Modernist utopian urban visions, and to the automobile design projects of other architects including Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd Wright. He provides abundant images, including many pages of Le Corbusier's sketches and plans for the Voiture Minimum, and reprints Le Corbusier's letters seeking a manufacturer. Le Corbusier's design is often said to have been the inspiration for Volkswagen's enduringly popular Beetle; the architect himself implied as much, claiming that his design for the 1936 competition originated in 1928, before the Beetle. Amado Lorenzo, after extensive examination of archival and source materials, disproves this; the influence may have gone the other way. Although many critics considered the Voiture Minimum a footnote in Le Corbusier's career, Le Corbusier did not. This book, lavishly illustrated and exhaustively documented, restores Le Corbusier's automobile to the main text.

This book is dedicated to architecture that serves the automobile, showing esthetic and technical solutions of the past few years - from parking garages to gas stations and showrooms.

This book applauds the union of architecture and engineering both today and throughout the history of building and construction. The relationship between the two fields is multifaceted. Some architects may have had an engineering background, and some engineers have experience of architecture. Some unacknowledged engineers have stood modestly behind great architects, and a number of architects have been encouraged and supported by their engineer-collaborators in designing structures that appear to defy gravity. Architects + Engineers = Structures focuses on the ideal: on a cohesive building design team where the members contribute equally, resulting in unique and exceptional designs. These are architects and engineers who entice beauty into buildings not just with lines on paper and calculations but with intuition, innovation and feeling for the needs of people, materials, strength, proportion, lightness and elegance. Structures featured include: * dome of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence * Church of the Sagrada Familia, Barcelona * Eiffel Tower, Paris * Sydney Opera House, Sydney * Marina City, Chicago * Olympic Swimming Pool Arena, Tokyo * London Eye, London * many other international examples, both celebrated and less well-known "This subject is very important, and I hope the book will attract the attention of many architects and engineers." Professor Mamoru Kawaguchi Also by Ivan Margolius: Automobiles by Architects, Wiley-Academy, ISBN 047160786X "How rare it is to put down a book with the sense of pleasure satisfied, the mind excited by ideas and information, nostalgia stimulated, the eye amused by illustrations." Brian Sewell, The Spectator "Superbly entertaining book." Edwin Heathcote, The Architects' Journal "This is an enjoyable read." Building Design "Excellent book." FX Magazine "Purchasers are likely to have something unique on their bookshelves." The Automobile "A pleasant surprise is the density and clarity of the text, usefully accompanied by a wealth and diversity of iconography." L'Architecture d'aujourd'hui

Takes you on a trip through some iconic houses and the unique cars that match them in elegance of design and construction

Published in 1923, Toward an Architecture had an immediate impact on architects throughout Europe and remains a foundational text for students and professionals. Le Corbusier urges readers to cease thinking of architecture as a matter of historical styles and instead open their eyes to the modern world. Simultaneously a historian, critic, and prophet, he provocatively juxtaposes views of classical Greece and Renaissance Rome with images of airplanes, cars, and ocean liners. Le Corbusier's slogans--such as "the house is a machine for living in"--and philosophy changed how his contemporaries saw the relationship between architecture, technology, and history. This edition includes a new translation of the original text, a scholarly introduction, and background notes that illuminate the text and illustrations.

One of the most interesting questions in architectural history is why modern architecture emerged from the war-ravaged regions of central Europe and not the United States, whose techniques of mass production and mechanical products so inspired the first generation of modern architects like Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and Walter Gropius. In From Autos to Architecture, sociologist David Gartman offers a critical social history that shows how Fordist mass production and industrial architecture in America influenced European designers to an extent previously not understood. Drawing on Marxist economics, the Frankfurt School, and French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, From Autos to Architecture deftly illustrates the different class structures and struggles of America and Europe. Examining architecture in the context of social conflicts, From Autos to Architecture offers a critical alternative to standard architectural histories focused on aesthetics alone.

The book that helped spark the retro craze for fifties architecture and introduced the term googie to the world is back! First published by Chronicle in 1986, this key survey of mid-century coffee shop and commercial architecture is still the standard work on the subject Googie Redux is a thoroughly revised and expanded edition of the classic and perennial top-selling book that rekindled the craze for 1950s coffee shop and commercial architecture. Long derided by critics as popular folly, the style - so named after John Lautner's eccentric Los Angeles coffee shop - was emblematic of Southern California's car-oriented architecture. By the time of the first edition's debut, these buildings were being demolished by the score. Alan Hess' 1985 Chronicle book did much not only to educate, legitimize, and popularize the style that characterized this endangered architecture, but it helped spark a resurgence of interest into midcentury modern design. Completely revised and significantly expanded in both text and images (some of them recently unearthed for this edition), this redesigned package features is still an entertaining and informative look at the rise, fall, and resurgence of the commercial architecture that changed the American landscape. Includes a greatly expanded guided tour of the iconic buildings in Southern California.