Early in the 20th century, modern architects established an affinity for automobiles. For the Italian Futurists in the days before WWI revealed the darkest potential of the Machine Age, cars and planes symbolized dynamism. Others saw the emergence of the mass-produced car as a force which would reshape the form and space of cities and the pace of life lived within them. It's impossible to imagine Frank Lloyd Wright's 1932 idea for Broadacre City (which was really a giant suburb) without the automobile.* As early as the mid-1920s, Le Corbusier suggested demolishing central Paris and replacing it with a grid of essentially identical 60-story towers, as this would provide the speed and ease of movement allowed (indeed, demanded) by the new technology. He never explained how anyone would find their way home in such an environment, especially after enjoying a couple of drinks at a bistro…perhaps the bistros and cafés would disappear as "new solutions", in the words of the architect, "imposed themselves". In the photo below, Corbu proudly leans against his late-20s Voisin Lumineuse, parked before his Pavillon Suisse, completed in Paris in 1931. Artists and engineers adopted the Voisin because of its aviation-derived lightness and mechanical elegance, but Corbu actually had nothing to do with the design of this vehicle. Perhaps this is why it already looked dated in 1931, while the Swiss Pavilion still has a certain freshness even today, helped along by the fact that it announced the themes of mid-century modern design (now fashionable again) about two decades early. It's hard for modern eyes to ignore how much Corbu's beloved sleeve-valve Voisin looks like a clunky anachronism in front of his bright new building.
Around the same time as Corbu was rethinking the modern city and completing his project in the Cité Universitaire, Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius was designing a couple of prototype automobiles for the German Adler firm, and at least one of these was exhibited at the Paris Auto Show in October 1930. Beyond 3 Karmann-bodied cabriolets like the one below and 3 sedans built by Neuss, the Gropius-designed cars failed to find an audience. Like the Voisin, they seem an assemblage of distinctly separate, albeit tastefully-trimmed components (reflecting perhaps the "elements of architecture" which were a part of formal education) rather than an attempt to form a unified, aerodynamic or sculptural response to the fact that cars slice through the air as they transport their cargo. At Adler, that approach would wait a few years for the arrival of aerodynamicist Paul Jaray. In Paris, it would be the province of designers like Joseph Figoni, another non-architect.
Meanwhile, back in Paris, Corbu was rethinking the car as a minimum-cost transport module. He placed a small engine and transaxle unit between the rear wheels, with a wide front seat accommodating three modern but necessarily friendly people, with a side-facing seat in the rear. The architect's longitudinal section sketch below is shown superimposed over the Golden Section diagram which formed limits for its Cubist radii and angles, and which also reflects Corbu's obsession with proportional systems. In the background, someone has lightly sketched in an early prototype VW…
Corbu claimed that his design influenced both the VW Beetle and the later Citroen 2CV. As La Voiture Minimum first appeared in 1936, when VW had already appropriated Hans Ledwinka's 1933 Tatra 570 as a template for the Volkswagen Type 1*, the first possibility is unlikely. It should be noted that some features of the Minimum Car were more advanced than the Beetle, including its basic physics. Note that the engine sits betwixt the rear wheels, somewhat like 1970s Tatras, rather than behind them as on the Beetle. La Voiture Minimum might have been a sleepy performer like the 2CV, but probably would have handled better than the Beetle...
It's easy to see how this 1936 design may have influenced the Deux Chevaux, a project which CItroen began in 1937. The flat planes of the sides are joined by a singly-curved arc of roof, which like the later 2CV features a sliding fabric sunroof above the rear window. Glass area is even larger than on the Citroen, and compound curves are reserved for the fenders…here the front ones only, where they cheekily punch through the slanting plane of the cabin (shades of future minivans). The spare tire compartment is expressed by the flat circular door, the horizontal handle of which parallels the front door handle as well as the tubular bumpers which surround the entire car. The spare tire door and those bumpers are necessary elements which are here used as a substitute for applied decoration. Note how much space separates the front bumper from the body. The ample bumpers show that Corbu was well-acquainted with the driving habits of Parisians. It is not recorded that the architect approached Citroen with his design. Voisin, already suffering from Depression-induced financial troubles, declined it, but after WWII, Gabriel Voisin sold his own design for an even simpler, smaller rear-engined micro-car to Auto Nacional in Spain, which built about 10,000 Biscuters. The project chief for the 2CV, Citroen Vice President Pierre-Jules Boulanger, may well have been receptive to another architect's ideas on car design, as he had worked as a draftsman in a Seattle architecture firm before forming his own design and construction firm in Canada. Like Voisin, his experience included aviation, but as a captain in the French Army air corps during WWI. He famously described his concept for his own minimum car project as "an umbrella on four wheels." It was produced from 1948 to 1990 in nearly 3,900,000 examples.
In the United States, engineer and building designer R. Buckminster Fuller proposed his Dymaxion living units and automobile during the same era; the car was displayed at the 1933-'34 Chicago World's Fair. While the form of the Dymaxion was more obviously aircraft-derived than that of Voiture Mimimum, with curved windows and a central fin, the chassis design was an unlikely assemblage. Dymaxion was a rare example of a rear-engined, front-wheel drive car. A Ford V8 sat ahead of the single rear wheel, which provided the steering function. The driver sat ahead of the front wheels, and while interior space utilization was predictive of the minivans half a century away, the handling characteristics were so odd that Fuller decided the car should only be driven by those who'd had an instructional course in its operation. As with the Gropius Adler and Corbu's minimum car, the Dymaxion missed commercial production. The three prototypes were produced at the old Locomobile factory during 1933-'34 under the direction of naval architect Starling Burgess. By funding this project with his own money, Fuller provided temporary jobs for a crew of 27 during the Depression's darkest days; 1,000 applicants showed up for those jobs. One original Dymaxion survives; two near-replicas have been built. One of these is shown below the hovering spacecraft image of the Dymaxion House.
It's easy to forget that as late as the mid-1970s, the basic architecture of the automobile was by no means settled. In the mid-1950s rear-engined cars were increasing in popularity, joining a great mass of front-engined rear-drive cars, a few front-wheel drive cars like Citroen, a small flock of four-wheel drive utility vehicles, and a barely perceptible trickle of mid-engined racers. Chassis structure included separate frames of various types, unit and semi-unit construction, and stressed-skin experiments like Jaguar's D. To this profusion of competing types we now add architect Carlo Mollino's 1955 Nardi 750 Bisiluro (Italian for "twin torpedo"). Collaborating with engineer Mario Dalmonte and builder Enrico Nardi, Mollino suggested minimizing air resistance by reducing the car's central mass. Reasoning that the wheels and their enclosures would be the biggest contributors to air penetration, he suggested placing the driver and fuel tank in one two-wheeled pod, and the engine and transmission across the way in the other one. A bit like two motorcycles linked by an airfoil…or a land-bound catamaran. The tubular chassis was designed following Mollino's body design, which also featured the radiator's cooling tubes running across the central airfoil as well as a rear-mounted air brake which was replaced by a jump seat at the insistence of Le Mans scrutineers. Mollino's design was fabricated in light alloy by Carrozzeria Motto...
…while the twin-cam, inline 735 cc four cylinder engine, mounted between the wheels in the left pod, was provided by Giannini. In the tragedy-haunted 1955 Le Mans race, the tiny, lightweight Nardi reached speeds up to 137 mph, but proved sensitive to side winds and tricky to handle, even in a straight line. After the first hour, before it could be affected by the horrific accident which nearly ended automobile racing in Europe, the Nardi was blown off course in the wake of a passing Jaguar. It ended its racing career in the grass, with lucky driver uninjured, and today lives in a museum.
*Footnotes: Frank Lloyd Wright's design for Max Hoffman's NYC automobile showroom is featured in our post "Max Hoffman: An Eye for Cars" from May 1, 2016. The sources for the VW Type 1 design are discussed in "Cars and Ethics: A Word or Two on VW" from November 27, 2015.
Bibliography: Automobiles by Architects, by Ivan Margolius, published by Wiley-Academy, Great Britain, 2000.
Photo credits:
Top: hebdo.ch (featured in Automobiles by Architects)
2nd: autobild.de (featured in Automobiles by Architects)
3rd: lautomobileancienne.com
4th: archpaper.com (model by Antonio Amado)
5th thru 7th: wikimedia
8th: museoscienza.org
9th: slotforum.com
