experimentsinmotion:

Architecture After the Street

Jeffrey Inaba

By far New York has the highest ridership of public transportation among US cities. A significant percentage of people take the subway, bus, or commuter rail daily. Combined with the options of traveling by foot, bike, or taxi, New York stands as the country’s premier model of urban multi-modal transit. Given the great number of people who travel by these means it would seem that the private automobile is not entirely needed. But be that as it may, the automobile is the main means of transportation. 

[“Commissioner’s Plan for Development of Manhattan,” 1811]

Though we often don’t consider it to be the case, the car is king in NYC. Accepting our four-wheel friend as a prerequisite, the studio will develop new architectural typologies by imagining a different presence for the car.

[“Hochhausstadt,” Ludwig Hilberseimer, 1924]

If the contemporary city up until now has been designed to the car’s specifications of movement, then we will develop new concepts of urban motion that influence the design of the car.