Art and imagination in architecture created for the automobile. The Key tells the story
27 September 2024 1 min read 1 images
It is well known that the 20th century was the century of the car. What we often overlook, however, is how much the car has influenced the environment in which we live: the few sheds of the past where carts and carriages were stored have now become garages of all types and shapes; industrial factories for production and experimentation have taken on dimensions previously unknown in industrial factories, and petrol stations have been transformed into attractive and colourful islands, each dedicated to a brand and its identity, profoundly changing the reality in which we live.
The Key has published an interesting story, written by a renowned university professor, Spartaco Paris, which touches on this very theme and its ongoing transformation.
The romantic factory that in 1930 transformed an island in the Seine, Île Seguin, in the suburbs of Paris, into a kind of fairy-tale ship for the production of Renault cars, like the large wind tunnel built as a sculpture in the late 1990s by architect Renzo Piano in the Ferrari factory area in Maranello, are magnificent examples of creativity inspired by the automobile.
No less spectacular, not least because it was designed in 1915, is the large FIAT factory in Lingotto, which had nothing less than a track with banked curves on its roof for testing each car produced.
Leafing through the pages of The Key, no less surprising are the garages, enormous volumes transformed into works of art, such as the Ponthieu, in pure Art Deco style, in Paris, and the elegant garage-sculpture by architect Christian Kerez in Bahrain.
Imagination has played a genuine role in the history of fuel distributors: in the early days, and until after the First World War, petrol pumps were already authentic monuments to the technology of distributing flammable liquids, decorated in the bright colours of the companies. An interesting market study showed that the green and yellow colours of BP and the red and orange colours of Shell had a greater impact and were more recognisable than the predominantly white colours of Esso and Mobil Oil. But the real revolution, which came with the spread of the car, came with the transformation of petrol stations into rest stops with a thousand attractions. A magnificent example is the futuristic interpretation of the AGIP petrol station in Milan, on Viale Certosa. Not to be outdone is the imaginative “blooming” of the canopies at the NP Station in Madrid and the daring luminescent canopy at the Christal Station in Georgia.
On this topic too, The Key intertwines the history and art of the automobile and its world. The Key is created and designed to remain a timeless reference point with stories that will never grow old.
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