Mass production reformed all sectors of economic and societal development. In a relatively short time before and between the two World Wars, manufacturing fully evolved from artisanal, time intensive processes to specialized repeatable tasks leveraged toward the continuous, efficient and constantly improving production of goods. Industrial development’s influence on architecture, design and construction inspired architectural composition and variety from premade parts. Company literature and catalogues illustrating every component for building instructed architectural specification. Modern architects unlike their predecessors no longer invented project specific components, but detailed and specified catalogued elements. The repetitive and codified nature of this revolution also guided the commodification of particular building types; Standardization was notable in housing, tract or collective, and in the roadside travel culture spawned from the prosperous and productive years following the second World War.
Along with modular roadside diners, park visitor centers, perhaps the most iconic expression of standardized territorial decentralization was the motor court inn or the motel. Motel design exemplified modern modular, geometric and grid organizing and construction principles. Complementing automobile culture, most provided a series of simple no frill rooms accessible from a collective «motor court», a replicable archetype developed from the idea of arranging cabins under a continuous roof and clustered around a paved area which sometimes included a swimming pool. The planning principles were certainly repeated, however only a marginal amount were factory produced.
Most exalted the car to room connection. An abbreviation of motor-hotel, 61000 of these one-two floor buildings swiftly made the road-trip a highlight of Americana. The horizontal spatial layouts coincided or perhaps were a result of the development of American and California modernism more precisely, which has become known as mid-century modern. Most employed modernist figures, flat or shed roofs, or long and continuous horizontal patios related to the large expanses of surrounding emptiness. A direct consequence of industrialization applied to building, the relationship between car, room and courtyard became a motel «pattern language». The zig-zag plan used at the Capitol inn (Sacramento California, circa 1950) exemplifies this coded design strategy. The repetitive nature of lodging makes it a perfect and fertile ground for modular construction and many hotel promoters are presently driving a new era of industrialization in the lodging sector.
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| Capitol Inn plan (Sacramento, California) |
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