Captivating Cars and Architecture Drive a New Coffee-Table Book

Back in what seems like America’s automotive and architectural Stone Age, most cars were huge and the houses whose driveways they occupied were small. In an era long before the mini mansion or the minivan, the family car made as much of a statement about their owners as the homes they lived in. The connection between architecture and automobiles is celebrated in the coffee-table book Carchitecture USA—American Houses with Horsepower.

Written by Thijs Demeulemeester and Bert Voet, this new work is a companion to the co-authors’ Carchitecture, released by Lannoo Publishers in 2021. While the previous version featured European and world architecture, the latest volume showcases photographs and stories of notable homes, apartments, hotels, and public buildings across the United States.

Among the architects quoted in the book is Philip Johnson, who states, “An automobile is a familiar 20th-century artifact, and is no less worthy of being judged for its visual appeal than a building or a chair.” Johnson, a pioneer of minimalist design, gained international fame  for his Glass House, built in 1948-1949 in New Canaan, Conn. In a similar vein, the spirit of the minimalist Rosen House in Los Angeles, designed in 1961 by Craig Ellwood and Jerrold Lomax, is captured in a photo with a sleek 1971 Jaguar E-Type V12 Roadster in the driveway.

We enjoyed the first volume and welcome this tour that gives a glimpse of some favorite cars in beautiful stateside settings, some familiar and others largely unknown. Each photograph in the 192-page collection captures a unique relationship, whether a sober monochromatic facade or a mint-green facia mimicked by an automotive chameleon in the carport.

In Carchitecture USA, a late-1930s Peugeot-Darl’mat 402 perfectly complements the Wagner House in West Palm Beach, Fla., by architect Belford Shoumate. The round hood vents of the Peugeot and the circular windows of the home’s second story are Art Deco signatures, each detail so expressive of the era. Then there’s Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1955 Turkel House in Detroit, renovated after its acquisition by more recent owners in 2006. It provides the perfect futuristic backdrop for the ultimate automotive expression of the Jet Age—the Fiat 8V Supersonic by Carrozzeria Ghia. One of only 15 manufactured in 1953, this Fiat is a masterpiece of imagination, as inviting as Wright’s concrete block is foreboding. Yet both are equally irresistible and engaging.

California-desert architecture from the mid-century is a natural backdrop for cars of the era, and even of the present. The landscape and skies of the region inspired Raymond Lowey and his team to retreat to Palm Springs, where they designed a late-mid-century automotive icon, the Studebaker Avanti. Within the publication, convertibles play a starring role in the driveways of the once-wild West. From Cadillacs to Ferraris, such cars make it easy to imagine an age when the Rat Pack revelers raised the weekend party flag in their private Twin Palms enclave, and proving Enzo Ferrari right when he said, “Convertibles are for American playboys.”

Carchitecture USA explores a fascinating juxtaposition of disparate yet equally purpose-driven design approaches. Quoting architect Frank Gehry, “Architecture and car design are both about creating functional spaces that inspire and enhance the human experience.”

Click below for more photos from Carchitecture USA—American Houses with Horsepower.