Autobahn preparations

Luckily the Autobahn is in Germany and it works, as opposed to

the UK

pre-Autobahn review

Held a few weeks ago: Deane gesticulating.

First Official Meeting

Unit is up and running — first official meeting 3pm Wednesday, 7 October, in Morwell St.

We will discuss the readings, review each other's work, and split into research groups (2 students each) in preparation for the Autobahn.

The Lost Highway

This unit begins a three-year investigation into the architectural possibilities of land-, sea- and air-based networks. In 2009/10, we will study the Dwight D Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways (STRAHNET) in the United States.

A relic of Cold War logistics, the US Interstate system extends for 46,837 miles, connecting all aspects of American life from the domestic to the transcontinental and supporting the majority of all commercial and private vehicle traffic. Stretching across 48 states, the infrastructure of freeways and highways, tributaries and underpasses lays out America as ‘flat as birdshit on a Buick’ (as Don Delillo once said).

The architectural implications of the Interstate are as pragmatic and manifest as they are symbolically and mythically resonant. The unit will examine how the serpentine stretch of this system allows new architectural and urban typologies, from the spontaneous communities of retiree RV enthusiasts which spring up in the desert, to the Walmart distribution network which re-routes trucks as they drive across the US according to fluctuating consumer demand and weather conditions. By critiquing representational precedents such as road maps and automobile manuals, as well as intellectual precepts such as Venturi and Scott Brown’s ‘for- gotten symbolism’ in Learning from Las Vegas (1972), or Koolhaas’s hypersymbolic in S,M,L,XL (1995) and Great Leap Forward (2002), we will examine how architects utilise – and distort – research during the design process.

As a unit based largely around 2D modes of representation, we will employ a range of graphic methods including drawing, mapping, photography, film and television advertising to explore the Interstate system and work toward defining a new type of research-based design studio. After collecting spurious research data, debatable information and seemingly irrelevant documents, students will reinterpret and design a ‘drive-thru’ – a junction between the driver, the vehicle and the Interstate which offers a rich variety of exchanges and architectural possibilities. Typically located in anonymous and neglected locations – outside city limits or in the blank expanses of the desert – these facilities are not so much destinations or points of departure as a pause along a never-ending route.