It may seem extraordinary that architects - designers of stationary objects - should concern themselves with automobile design; but the automobile has long touched architects' imaginations, appearing to them as a house on wheels, as mobile accommodation. When the motor-driven vehicle was invented, architects recognised that its image, form and function would affect the quality of people's lives and their surroundings, and that to propose an automobile was a way to perfect the synthesis of art, design and the latest technology. A number of well-known architects liked to pair the architecture of their houses with their favourite automobiles in order to illustrate the close functional and aesthetic relationship between them. Some believed that their cars had to 'look becoming to' their architecture, and included automobiles in perspective views and photographs of their completed buildings, the result being a harmonising composition of the two elements that stressed their close affinity. The celebrated 'Ten Automobiles' exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1953, with its proclamation that 'automobiles are twentieth-century artefacts', brought into focus the automobile as an influential design object. Architects realised the importance of the automobile as anicon of an era and sought not only to design motorcars but to apply the principles of automotive technology and design to their architecture. This book explores automotive design by leading architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Adolf Loos, Richard Buckminster Fuller, Gio Ponti, Carlo Mollino, Norman Foster, Jan Kaplicky and others and its influence on their architecture.

Whereas science, technology, and medicine have all called forth dedicated philosophical investigations, a fourth major contributor to the technoscientific world in which we all live - that is, engineering - has been accorded almost none of the philosophical attention it deserves. This volume thus offers a first characterisation of this important new field, by some of the primary philosophers and ethicists interested in engineering and leading engineers interested in philosophical reflections. The volume deals with such questions as: What is engineering? In what respect does engineering differ from science? What ethical problems does engineering raise? By what ethical principles are engineers guided? How do engineers themselves conceive of their profession? What do they see as the main philosophical challenges confronting them in the 21st century? The authors respond to these and other questions from philosophical and engineering view points and so illustrate how together they can meet the challenges and realize the opportunities present in the necessary encounters between philosophy and engineering - encounters that are ever more important in an increasingly engineered world and its problematic futures.