A hallmark of International style, aside from the omnipresent white box, is your piloti, which raises the house up and away from the floor. All these stiltlike columns were used a long time by Le Corbusier in the 1920s and continue to be employed by architects to this day.
Certainly one reason to lift the house up off the property initially was to adapt the automobile. The car arrived en masse in the early 1900s and also had a substantial impact on how people lived. It stands to reason that it would also have had a substantial impact on how homes were built.
Two large issues with the car and house design are how to create a transition from car to house, and how to adapt the car as it just sits there doing nothing. 1 solution is to raise the house up and slip the vehicle below. Here see how some architects, starting with Corbu’s iconic Villa Savoye, have done just that.
Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye near Paris was Constructed in the late 1920s. The slim, pencillike pilotis lift the main structure above the landscape, giving the illusion that the house is floating above the field. Corbu’s fascination and love of ocean-liner design is here transposed into a static item anchored in place.
The ground-level outside walls of glass are curved to accommodate the turning radius of an automobile and visually vanish, increasing the illusion which the residence is floating above the landscape. And the distance between the glass wall along with the pilotis was designed to be just enough to accommodate a vehicle (probably a Peugeot). In fact, Corbu said that the house “was created with the auto in mind.”
FrontPorch
Another solution to accommodate the car is to take a corner or other chunk from this International-style white box. Cool, rational and Euclidean — but so pristine without the auto in the corner.
Raised up and left all the more inflexible with its white styled outline, the white box of the International style gives way to more organic materials. A parking area tucked beneath the house offers shelter for people getting in and out of their car, while not using any more property than is necessary. It is a reasonable solution for accommodating the vehicle on a small lot.
Coates Design Architects Seattle
The house form serves as a big gate which may be opened only by arriving in a car. And the cars sit securely in the middle, not off to one side. How American is that?
Paul McKean architecture llc
Materials and colors that blend with instead of contrast the landscape are used here. The result is an adaptation of the worldwide style that is less machined and much more romantic and natural.
Ian Moore Architects
Now that the house was raised and the car can slide underneath, why don’t you turn the vehicle into sculpture? This makes sense given exactly how much we spend in those machines and how fundamental they are to our lives. And for the most part (the Pontiac Aztec considers), they’re beautiful, sculptural forms that provoke speed and fluidity, a wonderful counterpoint to the static and rigid geometries of homes.
Universal Joint Design Associates
The house, like any fifth-wheel camper, is poised to be unshackled from its site, though definitely something a bit more substantial, state a Mack truck, is going to be needed in lieu of their sports car.
Baldridge Architects
Has the car slid down the ramp to prevent, or will there be a helix that wraps round to keep the upward movement the house implies? And what is more static, house or car?
Webber + Studio, Architects
A generously sized parking space provides the car room to glow and be that sculpture people adore. And all that excess distance allows us park it just so, making sure we catch just the ideal view of our cherished automobile as we gaze at it from indoors.
Can’t lift the entire house up? Then lift just the roof over the vehicle and support it on lean pilotis. Certainly there is no mistaking how one is supposed to go into and depart this home. It simply requires the car to be complete.
Belzberg Architects
“Let’s take the house out for a spin!”
Not only does this house get increased to accommodate the vehicle, but it will become a vehicle! Or a plane, or even a boat or any of the other things the owner decides to feature.
More:
Great Garages: Parking, Reconsidered