Personal Space

An interesting idea about experiencing someone's personal space, titled "Helmet Piece" by Maya Suess. It appeared in NYC last year in the Conflux exhibition. Project description from the event website:

"Helmet Piece is an interactive embodied installation. The work is made up of a group of performers outfitted with spherical helmets. The helmets are solid and closed all around the performer’s head except for the headset of a stethoscope protruding from the front. Audience members wear the headsets like headphones and listen to a composition of subtle internal sounds made by the performers. By locating Helmet Piece in a pedestrian environment, it transposes the human body’s interior soundscape onto the city’s urban freneticism, re-framing the metropolis through the sonic textures of our organs."

Perhaps it could be interesting to explore this idea of an instrument for creating personal space that can be changed and manipulated to mediate one's surrounding environment, much like a car or a building? Senses of hearing, seeing, and aural perception could be turned on or off depending on the user's desires for personal space.

Exhibition website: http://confluxfestival.org/conflux2008/helmet-piece/

Nissan's Land Glider

Not yet in production, but being seriously considered, for the Japanese market at least... For more photos and a cheesy YouTube video:
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/10/nissan-land-glider/

MIT's stackable cars

For the article in Inhabitat: http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/11/13/transportation-tuesday-mits-stackable-city-car/

Modular Electro Car by Behance

http://www.behance.net/Gallery/One--one-modular-electro-car/256326

Recent car design by Wes Jones for urban competition

GM got it right.

The highways of today compared to the vision from the 1939 Futurama exhibit... Not that far off.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama_(New_York_World's_Fair)

A magazine cover for the New Yorker from 1927.

Proposal

During the last century of its existence, the automobile has been a crucial instrument in transforming and shaping our culture, cities, and architecture. Since first becoming a reasonably affordable commodity for the public in the beginning of the twentieth century due to advancements in technology, industrialization, and mass production, the car has become a part of everyday life. The freedom, mobility, and exhilaration it can provide have appealed to us to an extent that has made the car virtually indispensable and a subject which every architect and urban planner has had to consider while designing since. At the same time, the negative qualities of the car and its impact on our society have also come to light and issues of suburban sprawl, inadequate yet obtrusive infrastructure, depleting resources, and environmental pollution are highly debated today. This thesis will critically examine the role of the automobile in our present day society and its effect on our urban environment, where automobile use shaped the development of our cities and infrastructure for the last century. By utilizing a bottom-up approach to urban planning, the proposal will integrate the automobile and all other means of public transport as a way of restructuring our cities to face our current issues and re-establish the Architect’s role in responsibly designing for and with the car in today’s urban context.