The drive-in is the place where the vehicle and the building collide. Just as architecture by its nature is static, the vehicle is by definition dynamic. What happens at this – controlled – collision, when mobility and immobility meet? In what ways is architecture challenged by the moving object, what concessions does a building make to accommodate movement, and how does it signal that movement here, temporarily, comes to a halt? Finally, how does drive-in architecture accommodate the driver or passenger, whose status changes from that of a mechanically moved body to a moving subject?

This session investigates the drive-in not so much as a building type (as Kenneth T. Jackson, John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle, Richard Longstreth and others have done) but as a phenomenon. The drive-in is seen as a challenge to architecture and its tradition of tectonics as much as to the car or carriage and the promise fulfilled by its movement. In that sense, it looks for the semantic dimension of the drive-in as it can be located in relation to architectural theories. Opening the chronological scope, we are asking for in-depth case studies comprising drive-in structures from early modern to contemporary times, and thus from carriage to motor age, explicitly including drive-ins long before that term was invented. Furthermore, we are interested in accounts of the experiences of these spaces, and how the collisions between mobility and immobility are ‘solved’ in texts or theoretical concepts.

The session seeks to examine how these buildings formulated statements towards movement and flow way beyond the modernist fascination for motorized promenades architecturales and generic automobile roadside architectures. Contributions may relate to, but are not limited to, individual buildings and parts thereof such as porte-cochères, drive-in rooms in early modern palaces (such as the vestibule of the residence at Würzburg), or the more obvious drive-in diner. Individual buildings may be discussed, but also regulations for incorporating vehicle movement within architecture, relevant texts from architectural theory, and not least accounts of the experience of such spaces. The aim of this session is to discuss the productive conflicts sparked by the friction between car and carriage movement on the one hand and the static building and tectonics as their sublimate language on the other, as well as by the friction between bodily experiences of mechanical and human movement, where mobility and immobility, object and subject meet.

Sigrid de Jong, Leiden University
Erik Wegerhoff, ETH Zürich

Contact : Sigrid de Jong, Email : [email protected]