Back to the drawing board

Le Corbusier once described houses as machines for living in. But when architects try to design cars, they don't tend to be machines for driving, as DAVID LONG reports

AS A new book on the subject makes clear, architects love automobiles - and it's not hard to see why. An exercise in miniaturised architecture, cars are in a sense little more than rooms- on-the-move, each one a sort of compact mobile environment encompassing everything architects profess to love: art, design, and the very latest in new technology.

Le Corbusier, for example, famously described his houses as "machines for living in", while accepting as part-payment for one set of drawings the deposit on a 1925 Voisin 10hp car. And though apparently not much of a driver himself, like so many of his colleagues he couldn't resist trying his hand at designing a better one - although to be honest, like most of them he made rather a fool of himself when he did.

No one but an architect, you might say, would have proposed building a vehicle out of reinforced concrete. Or one with leather curtains and semicircular windows (that was Frank Lloyd Wright's suggestion, his intention being to echo the horizon with the hemispherical sky above). Or indeed a city runabout based on a Mini but with a body like a cube of glass and a minimalist interior full of inflatable see-through seats.

The granddaddy of them all though is probably Buckminster Fuller whose pioneering geodesic dome inspired our own and who first turned his hand to automobile design back in the 1930s. Like many at the time, he mistakenly believed the most aerodynamic shape to be a teardrop, and applying it to the concept of an economy car, he drew a quite absurd machine, seating four abreast but requiring six wheels and no fewer than three separate, highly complex air-cooled five- cylinder radial engines.

His Dymaxion was even better, mind you, and not just because he actually built and drove several of them around New York with HG Wells. Six metres long and large enough to seat 10 or 11, the Dymaxion had only three wheels, channelling the considerable power of its 3.6-litre Ford V8 through the single one at the rear. It also relied on the same one wheel for braking and steering, but was at least relatively aerodynamic.

Driven by Al Williams, a famous stunt-pilot, the prototype was reported to have hit 120mph when tested in July 1933, although that now seems unlikely given the rear wheel's tendency to lift off at only 50mph. But delighted nonetheless, Fuller pronounced it the safest car of its day although it unfortunately crashed shortly afterwards, with fatal results.

Lloyd Wright's taxi was barely more credible, relying on a sort of Ball-Barrow arrangement at the front end and with one driven wheel on the offside.

But as far as urban solutions are concerned Quasar Khahn's device is probably the most bizarre. Built around a pair of Leyland Mini subframes cut in two and welded together, the body of the 1968 Quasar Unipower was a glass cube almost six feet square which looked as if it had been assembled using double-glazing components. Sliding patio doors on both sides and at the front clearly gave it unrivalled all- round visibility, but it is hard to imagine it offering much protection to its occupants in even the slowest of low-speed crashes.

To be fair, some ideas have turned out more satisfactorily. Our own Sir Norman Foster designed a solar-powered electric vehicle which now carries disabled visitors around Kew Gardens. ("A big glass bubble," he called it, claiming his inspiration came from the majestic Palm House.) And in the 1950s Carlo Mollino's imaginative Bisiluro actually ran at Le Mans, although it retired before the chequered flag.

The name, which means "Double Torpedo," accurately describes this diminutive 750cc projectile, whose excellent aerodynamics required the driver to sit low down in one torpedo-like wing with his weight being offset by the engine located in the other.

On the whole though most of the architects' efforts have been less inspiring. Le Corbusier's Voiture Minimum, for example, wowed the arts establishment in 1928 but by the time he finished working on it a decade later it looked quite primitive alongside Dr Porsche's VW Beetle - and not just because he had ignored small details such as suspension and propulsion.

Similarly, Lloyd Wright's hemispherical windows did nothing to aid visibility. And while Jan Kaplicky's NatWest Media Centre at Lord's is one of the most elegant of modern buildings (the world's first semi-monocoque building, it looks like the nosecone of a Formula One car), his design for a caravan is beautifully reminiscent of a Henry Moore sculpture but leaves little actual space inside for the occupants to move around.

The final word on the subject though should be left to the French aesthete and commentator Roland Barthes, who on seeing the new Citro'n DS described cars as "the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by the whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object."

Much too important to leave to mere architects, in other words, no matter how much they want to have a go themselves.

* Automobiles by Architects, by Ivan Margolius. (Wiley-Academy, 27.50).

* FROM now until 15 October the Design Museum at Butler's Wharf is hosting an exhibition of Buckminster Fuller's work entitled Your Private Sky, and encompassing his designs for houses, boats, furniture, domes and, yes, cars, made using the simplest and most sustainable forms possible. For more information contact the Design Museum on 020 7940 8790.

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