Autopia as new perceptual regime: mobilized gaze and architectural design


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Date

2021-05-20

Publication Type

Journal Article

ETH Bibliography

yes

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Data

Abstract

The automobile has reshaped our conceptions of space and our modes of accessing and penetrating the urban and non-urban territory in multiple ways, revolutionizing how architects perceive the city and contributing significantly to the transformation of the relationship between architecture and the city. Despite the fact that many architects and architectural critics and theorists have been attracted to automobile vision, in the field of history and theory of architecture and urban design, many questions concerning the impact of the automobile on our perception of the city and its territory have not yet been explored in depth. This is surprising when one considers that no other single factor changed the city so drastically during the twentieth century as the pervasive presence of the automobile. The article examines three different cases of architects—John Lautner, Alison and Peter Smithson, and Aldo Rossi—who tried to construct new visual regimes in photography from the car. The main objective is to present how new visual regimes in photography from the car informed in various ways the visual attitudes in their designs of buildings. The interexchange between the ways of capturing the views from the car and the formation of new design methods can explain the necessity to establish a new theoretical framework offering the possibility to historians of architecture and urban design to address in a sharp and concrete way the reciprocal relation between automobile vision and design approaches.

Publication status

published

Editor

Book title

Volume

8

Pages / Article No.

5

Publisher

Springer

Event

Edition / version

Methods

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Geographic location

Date collected

Date created

Subject

Automobile vision; Sequentiality; Snapshot aesthetics; John Lautner; Alison and Peter Smithson; Aldo Rossi; Semi-directedness; Photography

Organisational unit

09643 - Avermaete, Tom / Avermaete, Tom check_circle
02655 - Netzwerk Stadt u. Landschaft ARCH u BAUG / Network City and Landscape ARCH and BAUG

Notes

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