Transportation Design Elements in American Architecture

Abstract

WE ARE so accustomed to looking for the inspiration sources of modern architecture in earlier examples of similar buildings that it seldom occurs to us to search for origins in fields outside architecture proper. There is one which proves rewarding in the number of contributions that it has made, stemming from a development that has grown parallel with that of modern building. Reference is made to the influence of transportation design upon stationary structures. Boats, trains, and airplanes all have contributed much to the trend American building has taken. Features developed in vehicles out of imagination or need have been adapted in houses and other buildings in America more than anywhere else in large measure due to the perennial American love of travel. The American feels at home afloat, on rail, and in the air; and it is only to be expected that we find a reflection of these conveyances in his home. There is nothing new about a building being modeled after a vehicle. The Temple of the Sun at Konarak in Orissa on the northeast coast of India, constructed in the mid-thirteenth century and dedicated to Surya, the sun god, takes its form from the chariot of the Indian solar deity, who, like the Greek or Roman counterpart, Apollo, drives fiery steeds across the sky. More prosaically, the building resembles a huge ratha, or wheeled car of a type still pulled laboriously along in special Hindu religious processions today. A dozen wheels, each ten feet high, are carved on either side of the great stone platform on which a spreading pyramidal hall 100 feet in height stood before a tall tapering tower that soared 225 feet. This central group was surrounded by several smaller pavilions. Horses, straining at their