Some designers know no bounds. Frank Lloyd Wright went so far as to style dresses for ladies who lived in his houses. Raymond Loewy designed everything from cigarette packaging to Skylab interiors. And Le Corbusier, a founder of architecture's International Style, labored for years to interest a manufacturer in his Voiture Minimum, a minimal vehicle with unique style.
A new book, Voiture Minimum, Le Corbusier and the Automobile, takes an exhaustive look at the architect's efforts to launch a practical, everyman car around the same time that VW's Beetle was being developed. Corbusier appears to have taken production costs in mind by specifying flat cut sheet metal, tubular bumpers and flat glass all around. This would have made the car quite cheap to build. Unfortunately, despite his efforts at promotion, no manufacturer stepped up to license Corbusier's design.
Simple functionality, a large interior volume with minimal exterior footprint, inexpensive to build and repair, the Voiture Minimum makes sense even today. A rear engine chassis would be the only major engineering required. . . and a ready made market of chic urban trendies would scoop this car up like ice cream. Perhaps some manufacturer will still see the light and make Corbusier's dream car a reality. In the meantime there are full size models in Paris and London museums that give a sense of reality to what has so far remained but an architect's fantasy car.
And the hardback book from MIT press? Excellently written by Spanish architect Antonio Amato, it's a fascinating, in-depth read that's highly recommended.
Comments