Monday, March 8, 2010

A Machine For Driving-In


As well as being a fairly impressive piece of manoeuvering, this video struck me as a low-tech, everyday version of Mike Webb's Drive-In house, a project synthesising housing and cars. Webb's post-Archigram experiments were in themselves provocative derivations of Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye plan and the early modern movement's obsession with vehicles and architecture.

In the Villa Savoye, the car forms the ground floor plan through its turning circle and embeds itself within the architecture, as the start of the journey that ends in the roof terrace. Webb's designs take this further, fusing the two objects so that both house and car become a prosthetic extension of the driver/occupant.


(Mike Webb; Drive In House, via)

Nothing quite so advanced happens in the video above. Instead, the junction between the two becomes comic and absurd, like a Jaques Tati film. I particularly like the way the driver moves the furniture back into place after arriving too.

(Thanks to Sarah H for the link).

3 comments:

Markasaurus said...

I hope this man never buys a car with side mirrors or he is going to be in trouble.

David Barrie said...

WTF is he doing with the chairs? Arming himself against wafer-thin intruders?

Charles Holland said...

I think he likes things 'just so'.