Dennis Hollingsworth

Car City

This is the VW Autostadt , Wolfsburg , the delivery centre tower. View from below here.

Other Car City parking solutions here via Gizmodo.

Background notes:

Parallel Cities is something I came up with shortly after graduating from architecture school, a general scheme that seeks to unite and define three kinds of urbanism: traditional (Human City), ultra modern (Car City) and the various interpolations between the two.

The Human City is somewhere between Leon Krier(*1) and Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities, or what is known today as New Urbanism. The appeal of this is about human scale, thinking of cities in terms of urban quarters, encouraging pedestrian urban space. Problems arise when one goes about trying to manifest this urban type without resorting to arbitrary restrictions to freedom which results in Disney-ification.

The Car City(*2) is about the appeal of the imagination and the consequences that ensue, both heavenly and nightmarish.

The interpolation is about transducing inhabitants from cars to pedestrians and visa versa.

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*1: Favorite book from Krier: Houses, Palaces, Cities. Local representative here in Southern California: architect Stefanos Polyzoides, who enjoys another article on his work this week in the LATimes: Stefanos Polyzoides plans to make cities more livable.

*2: Best representative of the Car City ethos: Rem Koolhaas. Anyone who could imagine Delirious New York understands the craving to extend human experience beyond the limitations of human form.