(from The Interior Architecture Reader, edited by Gregory Marinic, 2018 Routledge)

Chapter 38

Architectural purgatory.

The car, the garage, and the house

Anthony Morey and Volkan Alkanoglu

Neither Design nor Function, Neither Circulation nor Program, Neither Space nor Place, Neither Object nor Inhabitant, Neither Interior nor Exterior …

Architects have revered the automobile for its abilities, its function, and its form. Paradoxically, the automobile spawned one of the largest threats to architecture: the garage. Devoid of function and implied form, and born from immediate response, the garage forged the next fifty years of the field. In thinking of the city and home in the twentieth century, inevitably transportation, highways, and roads come to mind. Today’s constant stream of movement finds humanity constantly moving through the interiors of the world, only viewing glimpses of the exterior environment. Inside our homes, automobiles, and offices, the world has become a constant interior.

Architects have used the appearance and formation of the automobile as generators of architectural relevance and a canvas of exploration; exemplified by Le Corbusier and his depictions of the modern city, his famous 1927 photo in front of Casa Weissen layered with an automobile and a female model, or Villa Savoy’s lower level articulation that allowed for the full turn radius of a car, empowering the car to both enter the interior shell of the home and dominate the initial design of the home. Frank Lloyd Wright often designed both for and around automobiles. His masterpiece, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, owes its most distinctive interior elements – the spiral of its rotunda and its continuous surface circulation – to his affinity for the automobile and the space they occupied. Architecture has had a long and fascinated affliction with the automobile. Yet, the automobile is not a child of architecture at its inception; in fact, it could be said it was made to bypass architecture.

The car plus architecture equals the garage

The early intersections of architecture and automobile slowly brought the car from the street into the home. The home, reluctant to fully accept this foreign intruder, fought back. In the end, a third, alien formation was produced, one belonging to neighbor parents fully, and instead, we received the outlier of interior space: the garage (Figure 38.1).

The large numbers of cars, and the myriad trips in those cars to and from home, work, places of recreation, grocery stores, and so forth made traffic a universal subject of discussion throughout the architectural discipline. This allowed for cities to become the backdrops of daily life, only blurs between red lights and parking garages. Focus shifted to the destination, highway signs, and turns. Once differentiated, cities became similar, only identified by their highway exit numbers. Garages grew over parks; people became cars and buses in photos. Over time the car became as much of an inhabitant of architecture as the human. They produce immense density, with the tendency of driving intense loneliness. We sit, watching lives that will never meet ours pass us by, separated only by the technology

that is made to connect us. We follow the red lights to our destination, looking at the white lights of those that have experienced our adventures return to where we come from.

The automobile has produced highways, parking, and modified architectural endeavors on every level. The car was an urban phenomenon whose sudden appearance caused havoc with downtown streets, traffic, and storage. The spatial problem became so acute that there was little time to understand the repercussions of such an injection of form into the social realm. Thus, function became form. Early garages doubled, as did repair shops and filling stations. The automobile soon needed as much architecture as the residents they transported. This new inhabitant played a civic role in appearance, their designers cladding the new structures with glazed terracotta facades and operable windows. As stated by Rafael Moneo in reaction to Le Corbusier’s work:

Architecture must also assume its role in assimilating and integrating the automobile, find a place for it in its agenda. I don’t think anyone would be surprised if I were to say that architecture so far made very little effort to try and coexist with the automobile … contemporary architecture “mistreats” the automobile, perhaps with the acquiescence of society … recalling the importance that Le Corbusier attached to the automobile seems to me to be a very relevant and useful reflection … Le Corbusier thought that the car should always be present in his Architecture.$^1$

While much of the work that exists today is a reaction to the original implementation of the automobile into society, society – and directly architecture – has done very little to advance itself in the name of integration or assimilation.

The automobile dominated architecture. It restricted it, forced it to comply, and reinvented the method and parti of architecture. Architecture had historically been focused on the interaction and inhabitation of the human figure. It has long been focused with this realm of society, yet architecture has found itself controlled, manipulated, and desperately chasing the goals of the automobile industry. The home being labeled as a machine for living brought upon the formation of the car as a machine for the home. The explosion into society at a rate of one every forty-five seconds created an overflow of machines. An overflow of design allowed little time for response from a field that reveres thought over implementation.

Architecture’s fantastic response was the garage – the architectural equivalent of purgatory; a space that has largely become one of disarray, storage, and exile of history. As part of the typical single-family house, the garage has always been an eyesore or an architectural misfit to any comprehensive layout and parti; stuck on the side, hidden behind brick veneers, disguised as an extension of the housing mass. The automobile,

proud marvel of the industrial age, the sign of modernism, technology, and design found itself located next to tools, Christmas lights, and washing machines. Architecture had no response, no assimilation, and no integration – only space. It was an object, one that was used as needed and forgotten when not.

Even today, a garage is known as a part of a home, and is associated as a parasitic object attached against the home’s will. Viewed as an unconventional space within the conventional urban fabric, the garage has found itself as home to countless modern day revolts. This purgatory of a space has allowed for unconventional ideas to explode; creations such as Amazon, HP, Apple, Nirvana (and in general all young bands), all formed and fostered initially as outliers and outcast in society, were all founded within this invisible armature of suburbia. Here is where we store the pinnacle of the Industrial Revolution, in a space bleeding revolution, bleeding reinvention, and we are surprised when reinvention turned its eyes on its most unwarranted occupant. There must be an avenue to regain the volume that has traditionally been allocated to an uninhabited space within the home.

Car as form, as object, and as space evokes many of the same tools, thoughts, and conversations found within architecture. Performance, corner issues, transparency, and privacy are all found on the scale of the home and on the scale of the automobile. Space, for architects and designers, exists in realms with names such as “inside” and “outside.” There is a clear connection between the two, one that seems to grant leeway in the way that either is connected or understood. This question of what an automobile is allows for us to stop and wonder what we are designing. In reality, what does the term “automobile” imply? Does it imply the function of the object? The shape? If anything, it seems to imply an idea, a memory, one that is tied to something more than form and function. In considering early memories of an automobile, it is likely that it existed in the form of a toy, an object you held in your hand; one that drove over any object within reach, survived falls from the tallest bookshelf, and resided in the home. It was also the magical animal your parents took to work in the morning; it was the way to

see the world. It was not merely an internal combustible engine framed by a steel chassis with air conditioning. There is always more to an object that the object itself. Here we discover where architecture can find some creative freedoms and interpretations. We must consider that the term itself has run its course.

Architecture may have reached a point where the automobile is ready to be absorbed, for the term to be played with, contaminated, and tested. A moment came in the last century where the terms “technology” and “machine” delineated from the dominance of the other. They both have formed an arena of architectural discourse, one where the aesthetics of function have seemed to overwhelm the discussion. Here, it may not be the aesthetics in question, but the social impact of the term. Society has found itself welcoming technology within the setting of the home, while uneasy of the term machine, which has come to imply dirt, noise, and pollution. Here is where the car has found its Achilles heel. While pursuing the Darwinian desire for survival, the automobile has turned to technology to survive.

Technology has a long history of distorting architectural conventions. It has destroyed the corner by allowing curves to smooth it into oblivion; it has disfigured poché (the walls, columns, and other solids of a building or the like, as indicated on an architectural plan, usually in black) into a graphic, no longer a negative space of conversation. Technology has allowed us to embrace our imaginations, our impossibilities, and to construct them. Our thoughts and ideas are closer to those of childlike dreams and superhero worlds than those of modern day architectural thinking. Architecture has found time to play, to take a step back and allow for some enjoyment, some fruitful embracing of the sprints it has been forced to make to keep up with the machine. Architecture has found itself a child again, pursuing routes of discovery with little regard to outcome or reality. It is valuable to consider how, in this new century, technology seems to be capable not only of collapsing distance but even annihilating it, such that our notions of space and of the built environment are being reinvented to align with the urges and desires of our dreams. Dreams have become the sketches and hopes of reality.

What is a car with no driver? What is a car with no destination? What is a car that no longer needs a road to travel? What is a car if it drives itself? What is a house if not a stationary car? Modern automobiles resemble building programs rather than dirty machines. Inventing refreshed views on the car-architecture assimilation, the car has found a way to understand the home, the dwelling, and thus, architecture. The car is no longer a machine, but technology. The driver, once a staple of a car, is no longer needed, allowing for self-guided movement, thus fostering communication and interaction such as that found in the program of a home. The car is no longer forced to thrive on gasoline and fuel but is quickly becoming a thriving sustainable appliance allowed in the home. Recent technology has allowed the car to receive the largest transformations of form, usage, and program since its inception. This change, these variables and the destabilized nature of the car, has left a larger ability for architecture to regain the space once stolen; it has given architecture a playground of possibilities.

There is a sudden blurring of programmable space and connectivity being allocated to the automobile. If connectivity is no longer based on proximity, is a car needed for relevance or transport? If you can talk, eat, and sleep in a space that is in constant movement, what is the benefit of community, neighborhoods, or towns? There seems to be more at play than a car that can plug into a wall or a battery that can recharge in eight hours or less. The idea is that the cars of the future are playrooms or multifunctional rooms that are part-house-part-car and capable of things that only children can imagine. The car becomes a space of programmable possible impossibilities; it becomes the object that can survive falls from the tallest bookshelf.

The automobile has become a space of social interaction; it is no longer the lonesome experience of a machine but has become a medium of connection for technology. As in Greg Lynn’s RV prototype house, it uses the terminology closely associated with automobiles and allows for the program of a house to infiltrate and inform the form. Projects like Auto Residence of 2012 by Volkan Alkanoglu Design shows how the simple choice to reject the garage as an object and implement the car directly into the

interior dwelling can create a forum of conversation between the two. This allows both to resonate off each other, parts of the dwelling become the car, and the car becomes part of the interior organization of the dwelling. By reducing the form and utility into a space, much like the cabin of a car, the dwelling brings together intelligent systems, comfort, and freedom of motion while calling attention to the jumps in technology’s ability to realign architecture’s tendencies.

Various forms of media have understood the usage of the car and garage, and might give us a glimpse of the trajectories in architecture. The Jetsons, a cartoon, showed the ability of a car that folds into a briefcase, completely erasing the need for auxiliary storage. The film Oblivion shows a motorcycle that folds into a briefcase and can thus be carried to and from a destination, the machine completely concealed within technology. While a childhood cartoon and a Hollywood film may seem to be farfetched and dispatched mediums from modern day architecture and design, we find inventions like The Folding CITYCAR from MIT, for example, that become a key part of the interior space, and allow for space-saving solutions and conservation of social tendencies and dwelling comfort.

While the threads of film, cartoon, and children’s toys may seem distant from conversations of dwelling, garage, architecture, and discipline, that could not be further from the truth. It reinforces the idea that form rarely follows function when function is constantly updated and progressing. Form and function do not exist in a world where neither is understood nor cared for, yet they allow for trajectories of architecture to see a glimpse into the future. This allows us to entertain the questions: Does a house still look like a house, or does a car still look like a car? Should they? What is a house, and what is a car? A youth’s TV show and Hollywood would seem to say it could be anything, and today’s technology would seem to agree.

It is important to question the current programmatic elements of our homes. Space, for architects, designers, and a majority of the world exist in realms with names such as “inside” and “outside.” Yet one group of today’s society has the ability to see that everything can exist in other

variations; they know there can be a middle, or no space at all, that not all must be tied to an extreme of classification or regulation. They can see the world in a cardboard box or an underwater universe underneath a blanket: children. To a child, space is not confined by architectural history. There is no hard line such as interior or exterior. Their playrooms allow for new associations and the erasing of old ones. They exist in a relentless state of infinite possibilities. They are unaware of any scheme, and because of this, they are capable of creating innocent mistakes and fruitful discoveries. To them, a garage is not storage, but an endless cave of possibilities.

As adults who remember when the world was limitless, we find ourselves in a constant striving notion of recovering the wonder and delight in the early experiences with space we once took for granted as children. It is valuable to consider how, in this new century, technology seems to be capable not only of collapsing distance but even annihilating it, such that our notions of space and of the built environment are being reinvented to align with the urges and desires of our childhood dreams. Perhaps, above all, play is a simple joy that is a cherished part of childhood. A child’s playroom is a place where anything can happen. Architecture can be an avenue of play for adults, one that combines the power of childhood naivetés with the means of processing experience and of defining the relationships, purpose, and order of architectural need and desire. It allows for consequences-free production with uninhibited ability. It allows us to take a car and a home and place them within each other. It allows us to wonder what happens and revel in the outcome.

Forms, spaces, and shapes are built with little regard to finite purpose. It is possible that with the reinvention of the automobile, its social and architectural implications may find their way out of the garage and into the home, right back into the playrooms of childhood awe. We must understand how and why we have the programmatic and social structures in our homes and find ways to reinvent the whole, not the part. We must regain the space and form that the car had held. Simple tools such as the usage of terminology, forms, or methods are a direct and immediate form of assimilating the utility of these two worlds of architecture and automobiles.

Scale, form, and color are all of the interaction needed, nothing defined by the definitions we attribute to them through repeated usage. It may be time to allow some naïve realignment.

Various forms of manufacturing, from aerospace, virtual, and automobile industries, are now openly transferable and infiltrating each other. Today’s technology is last century’s automobile. It has overtaken architecture, displaced it, shaken it, and allowed it to settle into new territories; it has allowed architecture to play. Modern understanding of space and form allows for cars to become the naïve toys of childhood, allowed to be anything and go anywhere. It is allowing the car to be absorbed into the house and into the city while bringing the city, dwelling, and social interaction into the car. The car has become the garage, and the garage has become the dwelling; the car is no longer an object but a program. This absorption of the automobile into the external shell of architecture has slowly allowed the garage to exist, and now the garage has been absorbed into the interior shell of the home, opening new and unexplored architectural challenges.

We once showcased the automobile on the exterior as a fashion of exemplifying the modern connection to architecture. The garage transformed the automobile into a symbiotic attachment to the home, only relevant through proximity. Technology has now allowed the car to travel into the interior without architectural separation. It is now shown on the interior; the framing of the interior architecture becomes the site for a new interaction between car and home. The exterior format of Casa Weissen is replaced by the Auto Residence of Volkan Alkanoglu Design (Figure 38.2).

A car can now be treated as an inhabitant in the interior realm of the home. The garage has found itself empty, unneeded. Aligned with the newly fashioned social norms of the home, and with transportation changing faster than ever, the time is ideal for new values and social implementations of architectural devices. This allows for architecture to regain the spatial opportunity it handed to the garage out of necessity to accommodate an uninvited and undesirable dweller. New developments in the automobile and manufacturing industry are pushing technologies

toward electric and connected automobiles, allowing us to blur the once stringent norms of what one calls a home. These new norms grant the home’s interior to bleed to the exterior, and the once isolated exterior to the infinite interior, allowing us to invite the once reviled dweller to become an inhabitant, a resident, and begin to understand its desires and needs. We now have the unique opportunity to rethink the troubled relationship between cars, the garage, and the interior, and thus, architecture itself.

Figure 38.2 Top, Casa Weissen, Le Corbusier 1927; Bottom, Park Residence, Volkan Alkanoglu 2012

Notes

1. Various authors, Automoción y Urbanismo: Europa – La ciudad ideal (Madrid: Fundación Barreiros, 2004), pp. 19–20.

2. Willy Boesiger and Oscar Storonov, Le Corbusier, Complete Works (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press, 1994), p. 18.

3. Volkan Alkanoglu, “Auto Residence – Volkan Alkanoglu | DESIGN”, Auto Residence, Volkan Alkanoglu | DESIGN, 2012. www.alkanoglu.com (accessed 8 June 2015).

4. “Yowp: The Jetsons Are Not Top Cat”, Yowp: The Jetsons Are Not Top Cat (accessed 12 June 2015).