INTERDISCIPLINARY URBAN RESEARCH
SPATIAL CARTOGRAPHY
University of Basel, Urban Studies, MA Critical Urbanisms, Fall 24
Initial PhD Research Project
HOW DO THE CAR AND THE CITY CO- EXIST?
Social Transitions, Spatial Proximities, and Architectonic Reflections of the Car
This research is prepared for the Interdisciplinary Urban Research course (IUR 2024), conducted as part of the Critical Urbanism master’s degree program within the Urban Studies Department at the University of Basel. The course is a comprehensive process that combines theoretical and practical studies, designed to prepare students for their master's theses. Since I had already submitted my master's thesis prior to this course, the process served as an initial examination for potential PhD research on my part.
OVERVIEW
Design-Based Urban Research
This paper integrates written and visual data from urban research, with a focus on the concept of automobility, to explore how urban studies and social sciences have often neglected the ways in which the car reconfigures urban life as it moves and socializes within an automobilized time-space. The research examines, analyzes, and synthesizes the car both as a coordinated architectural phenomenon and as a social manifestation, aiming to construct a coherent understanding of urban morphology. The approach is interdisciplinary: it emphasizes the reciprocal interaction between urban studies, social sciences, and creative disciplines to develop new methodologies, generate knowledge, and even establish new disciplines. This perspective highlights the blurring of traditional disciplinary boundaries.
Key questions
How can architecture, social sciences, and car design identify common goals for urban studies, develop parallel understandings, and learn from one another? What complex interrelations between society and the city have led the car to dominate transport systems to such an extent, and what conceptual frameworks and theoretical discussions arise in this context? In architectural debates, how is automobility—specifically cars—considered a social practice, a mode of dwelling, and a temporary space, and how might these considerations reframe the car, not as a stationary home but as a mobile, semi-privatized capsule, and what insights can architects offer on this phenomenon? From the perspective of architects, how do car drivers, dwelling within their cars as part of movement, shape the temporal and spatial geographies of cities, and how can the car driver be understood as a social figure in this context?
Key words
Automobility, automobilized time-space, moving society, social space, sociospatial practices, industrial sociology, consumption practices, modern perspective, human-machine interaction, urban morphological transformation, extensive space, fragmented space, car space, urbanization, hybridized car drivers, architectural utopia, integration of knowledge, interdisciplinarity
Qualitative methods
Empirical experiments, data analysis (descriptive, interpretive, and narrative), positionality, autobiographical reflexivity, focus group, interview, participant observation, photography, emotional mapping, spatial cartography, illustration
ABSTRACT
Above all, it is essential to discuss the dynamics underlying the topic chosen for this research—a topic that has been a constant presence throughout my life. For me, everything begins with the idea of perceiving and understanding ourselves as travelers. In this journey, the car becomes the space itself, and it is here that architecture comes into play, uniting everything into a cohesive whole. I believe that architecture surpasses all other professional disciplines. In my view, architecture was the first discipline; to exist, we require space, and space is the most fundamental instrument of architecture. In this sense, I consider myself, above all, an architect, and this field serves as the backbone of my work.
My life as an architect and car designer has been a continuous effort to explore, interpret, and communicate spatial connections and analyses through fundamental concepts such as movement, motion, embodiment, and abstraction across various sensory thresholds. This journey has been shaped by an adaptive, associative, and dynamic perspective. Here, cars come into the equation; they can also be seen as part of a journey.
The essence of being a traveler and embarking on a journey forms the core of my connection with cars. Within the framework of spatial memory and the anticipation of reaching a destination, I regard the exploration of the fundamental dynamics of the architectural profession—its sensitivity to movement, speed, form, and meaning—as the most significant pursuit of my life. For me, this process can also be interpreted as a kind of visual, internal, and sensory experience, shaped by the associative elements formed by spatial codes, intellectual trajectories, and semantic norms. It is essentially about being in motion, from birth to death. I use the car as a metaphor here—a kind of technological uterus.
Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin (1957–2007), a Turkish artist who studied aesthetics, philosophy of art, and sociology in Ankara and Paris, reflects on the themes of being a traveler and traveling: "Am I perhaps an artist-traveler? Everywhere I go to work, I gather ideas and materials to refine one project or another I am working on. For me, travel signifies a specific chemical state, a way of thinking in motion, and a lasting sense of freedom. In this state of movement and observation, ideas take shape much faster than they do in the place one belongs to and lives in. While in motion—which is the essence of travel—the mind and the visual system function in a way entirely different from everyday life. As you move forward, leaving the past behind, thoughts and images rush into your mind with an intensity far greater than usual.” All of this, for me, gives rise to auto-mobile bodies. Over time, I begin to associate everything with speed-driven imagery. This research is fundamentally grounded in that domain.
I have a background in architecture and design. As an architect and car designer, I am conducting research while developing new methodologies. In my studies, I explore the evolution of human-machine interactions in urban contexts, with a specific focus on car phenomena. I draw upon emerging issues in the symbiosis between mobile and immobile elements in cities and investigate mobility across various environments. My research centers on architecture and mobility in a broader sense, encompassing social, personal, and cultural dimensions and addressing contemporary debates in urbanism. Cars hold a significant place in my life, intertwined with untold stories. My earliest memory of cars dates back to a time before I started school. My education in architecture was instrumental in shaping my perception of cars, not just as machines but also as spatial artifacts. For my first master’s degree in architecture, I sought to establish a shared purpose for architecture and cars, structured around common spatial dimensions rooted in the assembling dynamics of the modern city. This study aimed to provide a fresh perspective on humanity’s journey through different spatial and cognitive structures, using the car as a cross-section between humans, machines, and the city.
After earning my second master’s degree in car and transportation design, I began combining these two disciplines to envision the future of mobility. I have since been teaching courses, delivering lectures, and leading workshops in this field. For nearly two decades, I have been sharing my work on my personal website, which serves as a summary of what an architect thinks about cars—as both a researcher and a designer—along with the dilemmas they bring to the urban landscape. Cars, to me, are mental structures and metaphors that I engage with daily, yet they simultaneously evoke a sense of alienation whenever I see or think about them. I both like and dislike them, often at the same time. This research aims to capture and convey the tensions of this contradiction.
IUR 2024, first class, first thoughts: How can we read the car in the city as a body-machine interaction within a constantly changing urban canvas and space? Exploring overlapping subjectivities by mapping an object—the car—onto something much broader.
EXPERIMENTS
This paper deliberately examines the IUR 2024 process alongside the development of the research. In doing so, it positions this work as a narrative framed within the timeline of IUR 2024. The IUR process and the outcomes of those classes have had a significant impact on this research, reflecting an evolution of ideas. Every step, in fact, involves an element of experimentation.
The written and visual materials, presented as a collage in the initial stage of the project and shown on the following images, aim to depict the bodily atlas of a car driver in an ontological, conceptual, and symbolic manner. This collage is significant to me as it references both the bodily fragmentation and the social isolation of modern humans. This work centers on the essence of the research, observing the car within the urban landscape and ultimately focusing on the human being. It seeks to explore the collision, conflict, and chaos that arise from the interaction between body and machine in the urban context while simultaneously highlighting the inclusiveness inherent in this interaction. The car is, in essence, a bodily extension of the driver—a mechanical consciousness; both share the same reflexes and exhibit the same reactions.
By deconstructing the driver’s body into pieces with its memories, movements, and the space it inhabits, this work aims to create an intersection, a projection, and a unified meaning between the boundaries of the car and the limits of the body within the modern-city context.
The car can manifest as a representation of the body in motion. The body itself articulates the full spectrum of the term "movement" or the "function of movement." The car’s spatial dimension reveals that the term "mechanical extension of the body" is inadequately defined. Instead, the car's space should be understood both as a personal, intimate experience of "being at home" and a discursive resource that constructs socio-spatial forms of inclusion and exclusion, which it asserts, justifies, or challenges.
The car can also examine the extent to which drivers—often isolated and disconnected from broader society—attribute significance to their perception of urban space. The work explores socio-spatial positions, senses of belonging, and boundaries, with a particular focus on how drivers experience these dynamics. How does daily movement in a car shape their perception of urban space? What thresholds in their daily lives reinforce their embodied sense of space? This work seeks to establish a social definition of the driver, who often lacks a definitive social status, and refers to the next stage of the research.
Click for more information on this work BODILY ATLAS
TECHNIQUE VS. METHOD & PROPOSAL VS. PROJECT
One of the most crucial aspects of this research is how it will be conducted. In this regard, the methods employed hold critical importance—or perhaps we should refer to them as techniques. I have realized that the distinction between technique and method holds greater significance for me than is commonly acknowledged. For architects and designers, techniques often constitute the method itself. This realization has opened an important intellectual avenue for me, which I proposed during discussions in the IUR 2024 sessions. A central question that emerged was whether a technique could independently define a methodology, given that the way we do something profoundly shapes the outcomes we achieve.
Evaluating the unity, differences, and distinctions between method and technique in research requires understanding their conceptual roles and practical applications. In social science-based research, which is often rooted in writing, the methodological approach is typically scrutinized in terms of how the research will be conducted. However, in creative disciplines, the focus shifts more toward technique, as production itself is inherently a technical process. These discussions led me to several key insights.
Method refers to the overarching framework or approach to inquiry. It addresses the "how" of a study at a macro level and is informed by philosophical or theoretical perspectives, such as qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods. Technique refers to the specific procedures or tools employed to collect, analyze, or interpret data within the chosen method (e.g., interviews, drawings, or models). Methods and techniques share a common purpose: answering research questions. While a method outlines the general research strategy, techniques operationalize this strategy. This distinction is especially critical for my research. Methods are broader in scope, shaped by epistemological and ontological considerations, while techniques are narrower, task-specific, and often pragmatic (Lawson, 2005). Techniques are selected based on the method in use and can adapt to practical constraints or findings, provided they remain aligned with the research paradigm. In contrast, methods tend to remain fixed.
The interplay between research paradigms, methods, and techniques is particularly significant for urban research projects rooted in design. In such contexts, techniques borrowed from various disciplines often constitute a methodology in their own right. Consequently, it becomes essential to assess the influence of technique on the methodological framework, as this relationship can significantly shape the direction and outcomes of the research.
Throughout my life, I have prepared numerous research works, including a PhD in architecture that I began in Istanbul but later decided to discontinue. One of the most challenging aspects of this process has been naming these studies: should I describe them as research proposals or research projects? I raised this question during the IUR 2024 sessions, initiating a discussion about the importance of distinguishing between these two terms. How do we determine whether a study qualifies as a proposal or a project? What are the dynamics, parameters, and criteria that define the content as one or the other? And by what mechanism do we decide?
This dilemma is particularly significant to me as an architect and designer. In architecture, everything is framed as a project, and architectural practice revolves around project-based work. An architectural project, in essence, is the foundational element of the discipline. Perhaps for this reason, when I approach research in a written format, it naturally takes on the characteristics of a project. For me, as an architect, all intellectual processes are intrinsically linked to project processes, and research itself is fundamentally an intellectual endeavor. This perspective also sheds light on how different professional disciplines, each with their own terminology and practices, distinguish between a research proposal and a research project. The discussions helped me formulate a number of conclusions, which I found useful for developing this paper.
A research proposal is essentially a plan or outline for conducting research. It defines the objectives of the study, explains its significance, and outlines the methodology to be employed. Proposals are typically written to seek approval, funding, or support. They focus on potential outcomes, justify the need for the study, and adopt a persuasive tone to gain acceptance. A research proposal is hypothetical and grounded in previous studies and theoretical frameworks. A research project, on the other hand, represents the execution of the research plan. It involves actual implementation, data collection, analysis, and dissemination of findings. Projects are undertaken after the proposal has been approved or finalized (Groat & Wang, 2013). They produce concrete results, interpretations, and conclusions. The tone of a project is analytical and thoughtful, and it includes data-driven insights and findings.
This distinction provides me with valuable inspiration for architectural projects. In architecture, a project addresses a specific problem or fulfills a particular need. It focuses on creating a tangible solution for a defined issue. However, these conditions are not strictly necessary for a research proposal. A proposal lays the groundwork, which, upon approval, evolves into a project.
In this sense, my current research represents both a proposal and a forecast of a potential research project. My aim is to achieve specific, concrete, and defined results based on carefully curated data. To accomplish this, I plan to collaborate with architects during the project phase. Engaging with architects in this process feels like navigating familiar waters—we will share a common language and understanding, which I feel will enrich both the research and its outcomes.
VISUAL THINKING
Everything I have tried to express so far about humans, machines, bodies, spaces, architecture, modern society, and the urban landscape, I believe, cannot be conveyed as beautifully or eloquently as in Oswald Mathias Ungers' City Metaphors. The four visuals, in the following image, shared from this exhibition hold a profoundly special place in my life, especially during the phase of transmitting ideas; I find them extraordinary.
The city itself is a tapestry of metaphors, figures, and abstractions. Perhaps the greatest challenge arises from materializing, fixing, and limiting these imaginations. The continued dominance of the car and its powerful impact on the urban environment might be seen as a reaction against such mental walls. For this reason, the dimensions in these works evoke, for me, the infinite and boundless nature of the city—a counterpoint to rigid thought.
These four visuals have captivated me since the day I first encountered them, years ago. They reflect an extraordinary intelligence, portraying the intricate interaction between humans and machines within the urban realm in such a unique way. However, this work holds an even deeper significance for me; it forms one of the core foundations of this research. It exemplifies visual thinking, a concept architects understand deeply. This structure might also illuminate the connection between method and technique.
Adding a visual layer to thought creates new dimensions, enriching the conceptual process. This approach is highly technical and independent of traditional methodologies. At this juncture, social sciences often appear linear and conventional compared to creative disciplines.
This research seeks to bridge these intellectual planes across different disciplines, emphasizing that thought is inherently boundless and cannot be fully constrained by any single methodology.
German architect Oswald Mathias Ungers (1926–2007) published a visual essay in 1982, introducing a short text titled Morphologie: City Metaphors. In this book, he conceptualized design as a method driven by analogies and metaphors, explaining how visual thinking operates. The introductory text, Design and Thinking with Images, Metaphors, and Analogies, was previously published in 1976. Throughout the book, Ungers presents a series of spreads, each featuring a single image, primarily drawn from science, biology, and technology. In the accompanying essay, he examines the role of imagination in the construction of knowledge, asserting that visual thinking is the most effective means of connecting ideas to form; this approach does not claim to replace quantitative scientific studies but argues that the rigorous use of scientific procedures must be balanced with imagination to construct understanding (Socks Studio).
Imagination, according to Ungers, is “the tool for thinking and analyzing,” and the entire process of thinking is described as “the application of imagination and ideas to a particular set of facts.” Imagination generates a “comprehensive vision” that enables one to make sense of reality; without this vision, reality would seem like a mere accumulation of equally important facts, making it impossible to discern meaning (Socks Studio). He writes:
"As the meaning of a whole sentence is different from the meaning of the sum of single words, so is the creative vision and ability to grasp the characteristic unity of a set of facts, rather than merely analyzing them as a collection of separate parts. The consciousness that apprehends reality through sensuous perception and imagination is the true creative process, as it achieves a higher degree of order than the simplistic methods of testing, recording, proving, and controlling.” (Socks Studio)
Later, Ungers delves into the relationship between imagination, perception, and psychology, proposing his theory of imagination as “a fundamental process of conceptualizing a disparate, diverse reality using images, metaphors, analogies, models, signs, symbols, and allegories.” Only at the very end of the article does he directly address the book's specific content—not for the measurable qualities of the maps, but for their metaphorical potential (Socks Studio). He states:
"The city-images presented in this anthology are not analyzed according to function and other measurable criteria—a method usually employed—but are interpreted on a conceptual level, demonstrating ideas, images, metaphors, and analogies. These interpretations are conceived in a morphological sense, open to subjective speculation and transformation. The book reveals a more transcendental aspect, an underlying perception that extends beyond the actual design.” (Socks Studio)
A synthetic discourse emerges from the interplay of three elements: maps, metaphorically revealing images, and titles that explore the conceptual dimension arising from the juxtaposition of two visual elements. In the following examples, Ungers juxtaposes the urban structure of Manhattan with human and mechanical systems to illustrate their visual connections (Socks Studio):
Skeletal structure / road structure / structural framework
Digestive system / sewage system / exhaust system
Cardiovascular system / subway system / hydraulic system
Nervous system / energy supply system / electrical system
Building on this work and deeply inspired by it, the research explores how a design-based approach can enhance content through observation and investigates the speculative potential of creativity as a technique—particularly within the field of architecture. It posits that creativity serves as a means of generating experimental, critical, and hypothetical knowledge, with a primary focus on architecture. City Metaphors serves as one of the most notable examples, and the research closely examines this study.
The projects conducted with architects will focus on mobile and immobile urban relations, conceptualized as "life forms" through design. They also incorporate an archival projection that traces the historical genealogies of urban morphologies, following the precedent set by Ungers’ work. This visual production reflects historical thought, integrating it into contemporary contexts. In this sense, the research adopts a perceptual, experiential, and interactive perspective on the city, underpinned by an interdisciplinary approach. This represents a spatial cartography, which will be detailed in the methodology section, as City Metaphors itself can be seen as a form of cartography; this research aims to enhance this section in spatial terms.
RESEARCH
We have built a world that functions like a machine; we possess a dual nature. On one hand, we are undoubtedly part of the natural process, and on the other, we inhabit an entirely different world, one shaped by our machines. It is to this second world that we truly belong, as it is a product of our thoughts. We can only ever inhabit a life that has already been constructed in collaboration with machines. Machines exist within a broad societal and spatial context. Viewing machines as tools of spatial processes, research delves into the transformations driven by machines in urban spaces. These transformations embody practices that create new formats for alternative modes of interaction between humans and machines. Understanding how machines, such as cars, can reshape and influence some innate aspects of human beings leads us to question the urban.
The relationship between humans and machines is one of the strongest forces shaping the city. Cars, in particular, play a key role in this context. As a symbol of industrialization, the car has created new spatial fragments for humans while simultaneously redefining interactions with urban spaces and rearranging social proximities. This triad—human, machine, and city—operates in parallel. Today, this connection functions within a technological rather than mechanical consciousness. Through the journey of cars, humans are not only physically present but also experience their existence through thoughts and emotions, which in turn shape urban spaces. From this perspective, the research traces the socio-spatial dynamics formed between machines, humans, and cities. To express this, the study focuses on the car driver as a basic unit of analysis, observing the linear and random connections that emerge from these interactions.
Analyzing the various components that constitute the city also brings us to auditory, visual, and sensory mechanisms. People perceive urban space through an interplay of these relational factors. The car adds new dimensions to these structures, visually altering space while transforming the city's soundscape into an acoustic core element. It not only makes movement visible but also imparts a certain vitality. Even in the most untouched corners of the city, the presence of cars defines a new spatial context for humans, making the car a mechanical extension of the body.
This research poses a simple question based on these observations: how can we approach the car driver as an anthropological phenomenon? Furthermore, what kinds of socio-spatial opportunities arise from this perspective, particularly regarding their social sensitivities, bodily schema, and spatial integration?
Mimi Sheller and John Urry are influential scholars in mobility studies as sociologists. In their co-edited article, The City and the Car (2000), they discuss the car driver. The term "automobility" captures the dual nature of the car: both a product of human autonomy, as suggested by ‘auto’, and a machine-driven system of movement. This hybridity creates a 'car-driver' assemblage, where humans and technology integrate into a sociotechnical complex. Automobility represents a paradox, offering freedom and flexibility while simultaneously enforcing constraints and rigidities on individuals and urban spaces. ”We use 'automobility' in order to capture a double-sense. On the one hand, ‘auto’ refers reflexively to the humanist self, such as the meaning of 'auto' in notions like autobiography or autoerotic. On the other hand, 'auto' often occurs in conjunction with objects or machines that possess a capacity for movement, as expressed by terms such as automatic, automaton, and especially automobile. This double resonance of 'auto' is suggestive of the way in which the car-driver is a 'hybrid' assemblage, not simply of autonomous humans, but simultaneously of machines, roads, buildings, signs, and entire cultures of mobility. We outline a manifesto for the analysis of 'auto' mobility that explores this double resonance, of autonomous humans and of autonomous machines only able to roam in certain time-space scapes. Such a manifesto, we argue, will transform current understandings and analyses of contemporary cities."
The city contains abstract, unseen, and unknown components alongside its concrete structures—textures that cannot be fully rationalized or measured. The car driver, who exists at the intersection of this duality between body and machine, defines a unique urban persona: a hybrid entity who lives with machines, in machines; whose reflexes, reactions, and behaviors are shaped by road signs and signals, as emphasized by Sheller and Urry; and whose bodily schema almost resembles a car attuned to speed. The research explores the emotional repertoire, spatial expansions, and social boundaries of this persona. The car space, regarded as both a lived-in and studied environment during the research, aims to reveal new potentials for socio-spatial connections in the city —beyond serving merely as a tool for gathering data about car drivers. Architects, who place the concept of space at the core of their discipline, are uniquely suited to examine this space through its physical and physiological dimensions. In this context, the research seeks to understand the sensory thresholds, spatial extensions, and intellectual boundaries that architects, as car drivers, experience on the urban plane. By observing a human being integrated with a machine, architects can illuminate the spatial relationships cars establish within the urban environment, particularly in terms of volume. In this sense, the car's social and architectural character reflects the individual, social, and cultural identity of its driver, especially when that driver is an architect. Urban research is fertile ground for interdisciplinary approaches, and this study advances the understanding of the car as a morphological and architectural unit within the urban context.
Although architects may not initially seem concerned with cars, the car has long featured in their imaginations, envisioned as a "life on wheels" or a mobile home. One of the most important mottos of modern architecture, "the home is a machine for living," is essentially a reference to the car; it also carries a subtext about the standardized production methods of cars, industrialization, and the mechanical consciousness of modern humans. Architects have recognized how the car's image, form, and function influence urban spatial syntax. When this evolution is realized through various sensory perceptions, the connection between human and machine generates diverse spatial dimensions. While the car achieves spatial integration through its mobility, it is also being reimagined as an independent architectural unit. Simultaneously, as cars shape new interpretations of cities, they form cognitive frameworks for humans. This century-long relationship has positioned the car as more than an object—it embodies a spatial imagination that shapes us as much as it deforms us. This extraordinary bond between human and machine has altered humanity’s perception of time. Traveling by car represents an indefinite, cyclic, and continuous spatial experience. The car, representing separation, transition, and integration, introduces a paradoxical spatial shift into architecture. What if the home, as an architectural unit, merged with the car, blending mobility and immobility to explore experimental forms of livability? What if the car, after its journey, transformed into a conclusive archetype within its extensively modified context? What if the "life on the move" concept inspired new car typologies that could integrate with future urban morphology? Throughout history, cars have redefined the modern city. The traditional divide between architects and car designers may dissolve if speculative projects merge these disciplines through creative processes, as this research seeks to demonstrate.
During this process, examining how design concepts and utopias have historically intersected architecture and cars is essential. Additionally, collaborating with architects could illustrate how these connections have evolved and how they might be reimagined in future models. This interdisciplinary approach between architecture and car design could establish a new level of discourse and integration, contributing to a cohesive vision for the future of urban mobility.
In the context of the IUR 2024 course, the discussion centered on the types of intellectual content, academic necessities, and expected outcomes that might emerge in the early stages of a research project. The students' insights, handwritten on the board by Ernest Sewordor.
METHODOLOGY
The research will use lateral, intuitive, and creative methods. This process constitutes the methodology as practice-led. Research "through" design generates more debate by being further developed through discussions between theory and practice. Frayling (1993) introduces a tripartite model of "into," "through," and "for" to clarify the complex relationships between design and research.
During the methodological development of the research, a key issue emerged regarding whom the research would involve. To eliminate uncertainty on this matter, the criteria of profession, age, and gender became important due to the specific nature of the research. The human profiles that make up this group have the potential to directly affect the results to be collected, and they can also influence the content, discourse, and future connections of the research. In this sense, I decided to work with architects on the research, which will impact the quality of the final outcomes. Collaborating with architects—drawing on the semantic, conceptual, and social backgrounds of my professions in architecture and car design—will be important for creating a shared communication dialect with participants, establishing stronger connections between the selected research methods and techniques, and refining the research. The combination of methods used in the research aims to be transformed into a kind of cartography project, which will be explained in detail below.
The research aims to provide an intellectual and collective creative experience. The process will mainly cultivate a spatial cartography project based on conceptual illustrations provided by a group of selected architectural offices in Switzerland. Nine architects from three different cities—three from each city— will be involved, and their names will be decided later in the process. To implement an experimental methodology, the projects will be discussed in speculative terms, focusing on utopian design scenarios that aim to manifest a form of life on the move, involving a set of illustrations. These projects will evoke a sense of the future that can be experienced within the unseen and unknown. The experimental diagnostics of the proposed projects aim to reflect future city paradigms and mobility configurations.
For the spatial cartography, the research will incorporate three additional methods with each selected architect: participatory mapping, interviews, and photography. Using city maps—likely of Basel, Zürich, and Lausanne—prepared at different scales along with a small map of Switzerland, participant architects will be asked about their physical, spiritual, and intellectual experiences, comments, and impressions at the intersection of the car and the city. With minimal intervention, they will be given the freedom to shape the discussion. This process will operate as qualitative research. The data collected will be integrated into the research alongside the drawings made on the map, the narrated versions of the interviews, empirical data, and observations. Photographs taken during the interviews, with due attention to privacy, may also be included, as well as other supplementary visuals. The participatory mapping method in this research should not be seen merely as a tool for gathering data about car drivers but rather as "a field to work in and on" that can reveal new possibilities and potentials in terms of the socio-spatial connections of the city. In later stages of the research, this data will be used to develop a conceptual framework for a spatial cartography project—a conceptual and methodological approach that unites theory, design, and practice between architecture and cars. Drawing from cars and extending beyond architecture, this cartography is not only about physicality but also emotions, memories, experiences, perceptions, attachments, and identities within a moving space. It represents an imagination shaped by utopian views—an allegory of representation and semantics, both graphic and artistic. By examining these practices, the correlation between social, spatial, and technological traces can better illustrate approaches to intimate spaces, where cars unpack their own features as architectural units on an urban scale.
In addition to collaborating with architects, architecture students can also be an important method for the research. This could be achieved by organizing a workshop or an architectural design studio that explores the intersection of architecture and movement within spatial integrity. The process will cultivate a balanced combination of hypothetical insights derived from a set of applied projects. At the end of the workshop, an exhibition could feature the experimental projects, illustrations, and models of proposed scenarios created by architecture students from ETH Zurich, EPFL Lausanne, and FHNW Basel in Switzerland. To implement an experimental methodology, the projects will be discussed speculatively, and the final work may address utopian scenarios.
Considering these three Swiss cities, which also includes a comparative approach, architects, and possibly students, requires collaboration with participants; therefore, the research has strong ethnographic dimensions. It will be carried out ethically, respecting the privacy and autonomy of participants. Informed consent, confidentiality, and sensitivity to individual and social norms are crucial for this interactive process. In this research, a specific aspect of the observed individuals will be selected for data collection: their behavior as car drivers, the social attitudes associated with being in a machine in the city, and the physical and social spaces structured around movement. The findings will be presented narratively, following the depth, richness, and dramaturgy of the context. This will include detailed descriptions, direct quotes from participants, and individual interpretations of socio-spatial meanings.
Today, researching urban space requires new approaches to understanding. The complex structures, functions, and realities of the city demand multidimensional perspectives that challenge research singularities. It is essential to deeply comprehend the spatial phenomena that constitute the city. To achieve this, combined tools are necessary to obtain more refined results from the data collected through the proposed focus groups. Building on this, interviews with architects aim to transcend the biographical-narrative research approach and introduce innovative data collection tools. These tools emphasize visual methodologies that foster a deeper understanding of both the group and the researched subject, with photography being a notable example. The research employs in-depth techniques that analytically explore the architectural dimensions of car spaces, their spatial connections within the urban environment, and the sensory and bodily dynamics of the human-machine relationship. Key methods include visual interviews, emotional mapping, and spatial cartography. These three elements are interconnected, with each stage informing and enriching the next. The process begins with interviews, progresses to emotional mapping, and culminates in a spatial cartography project. This experimental initiative, inspired by Ungers' City Metaphors, draws on his work with profound respect and serves as a form of urban morphology.
In the interviews, architects are first asked pre-prepared questions. This initial stage involves defining and assessing various visual and creative tools to complement the biographical interviews. This integration gives the interviews an architectural dimension alongside verbal and literary elements, as drawing is intrinsically linked to thinking for architects. Accordingly, these interviews are characterized as visual interviews. A writing and drawing notebook will be provided for the architects to use during the sessions, and the sketches, diagrams, and notes produced will be directly incorporated into the project process. This can be seen as a design methodology approach—where the methodology itself is designed and embodies design principles. The findings from the biographical-visual interviews will inform the emotional mapping process. The primary purpose of this mapping is to uncover the cognitive, emotional, and intuitive spatial and bodily connections revealed through the visual interview technique. Initially, a rich flow of mapping-related information is presented as a sensory strategy to enliven the narrative during the dialogic exchange of the interviews. In this phase, maps at various scales, including those of the city and Switzerland, will be utilized. Subsequently, a movement chart is created, serving as a visual concretization of the traditional biography often employed in urban studies. The architects will then determine the applications of the spatial-bodily cartographic framework. This framework offers diverse perspectives on the organizational dynamics of urban space and will be evaluated in both individual and public contexts. Finally, the spatial cartography project represents a spatial interpretation of the evolving roles among the city, the body, and the machine. Morphological in nature, it incorporates metaphorical elements, creating an original contribution to the research.
OUTCOMES
The research aims to provide insights into how cars, together with their drivers, reshape the socio-spatial practices of three selected Swiss cities. Its goal is to uncover new data and results that reveal previously unnoticed dimensions of urban life. In this sense, the research takes on an experimental dimension.
The study frames the car as an urban system, program, and structure that, in combination with the driver, acquires a social identity and definition. It conceptualizes the car as a complex socio-technical system that integrates various urban norms—drivers, infrastructures, and social interactions. The research draws on the social theory of the "moving society" and references the concept of automobility. It views the car driver as a paradoxical force, both self- producing and reshaping urban space, transforming the city into "a function of speed." Within this non-linear framework, the driver operates through senses, emotions, and thoughts, embodied as a mechanized entity.
In parallel, the research investigates the car's impact on urban form, emphasizing the profound transformation of cities driven by auto-mobile use. It highlights trends such as the increasing reliance on cars, urban sprawl, the decline of compact cities, and the rise of suburban formations designed to facilitate car travel—all aimed at enhancing urban accessibility. The study critiques how urban planning has evolved to prioritize road networks, highways, and parking spaces, often favoring machines over people.
By examining the socio-technical and technological systems associated with cars and their drivers, the research aims to foster a new understanding of urban components and their interplay.
Automobility, or the dominance of cars as the primary mode of urban transport, plays a central role in contemporary urban debates surrounding sustainability, livability, and accessibility. The following key topics are particularly relevant in this context:
First and foremost, the climate crisis and environmental sustainability must be addressed. Cars significantly contribute to urban greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, primarily through internal combustion engines that release CO2 and other pollutants, exacerbating climate change. Although electric vehicles (EVs) are gaining traction, their reliance on electricity from non-renewable sources in many regions, coupled with the high environmental costs of their production, raises concerns. The environmental impact of EV production, particularly the extraction and processing of materials such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese for batteries, is substantial. Mining for these resources can cause deforestation, land degradation, and additional carbon emissions, sometimes exceeding the environmental costs associated with oil.
Secondly, the complexities of technological advancements in the automotive sector warrant attention. While EVs are a step toward reducing emissions, they require extensive infrastructure, including charging stations, and are not as environmentally friendly as often claimed. Lithium-ion batteries, favored for their efficiency and lifespan, depend on resource-intensive mining processes that pose environmental and social challenges. These challenges underscore the paradox of technological advancements in the automotive sector: while offering solutions, they also introduce new problems.
Resource consumption and the inefficiency of car dependency in urban areas are also critical issues. Cars demand vast resources, from fuel and electricity to the materials required for roads and highways. Infrastructure maintenance, urban sprawl, and deforestation for highways contradict sustainability goals. In contrast, micromobility options such as bicycles and scooters are reshaping urban mobility. However, these alternatives often coexist unpredictably with cars on streets originally designed for vehicles, raising questions about how to design streets, roads, and intersections for multimodal transportation.
And urban design and the allocation of public space emerge as central issues. The dominance of cars in urban design is unmistakable. Cars consume extraordinary amounts of urban space for roads, parking lots, and garages, while being parked for 97% of their lifecycle. This vast allocation of space for individual use often comes at the expense of potential green spaces, housing, or community facilities. This singular focus on parking is far removed from collective urban needs, highlighting the need for a shift in how cities allocate and prioritize public spaces.
Cars demand significant space for roads, fuel and electricity stations, and parking, directly contradicting the principles of human-centered urban design; they bring critical challenges to contemporary urban debates, particularly regarding public health and safety. Car emissions exacerbate air pollution, while traffic noise negatively impacts mental health, disrupts environmental harmony, and diminishes quality of life. Stress and fatal accidents further compound these concerns. Moreover, car use poses serious safety risks, especially for pedestrians and cyclists. In urban spaces, these vulnerable groups frequently encounter dangers from cars, often due to inadequate infrastructure. Even in cities like those in Switzerland—frequently cited as models of urban planning— pedestrians, cyclists, and scooter users, including children, face considerable risks. The growing number of cars and insufficient protective measures lead to fatalities, injuries, and a pervasive fear of navigating urban environments.
This issue also highlights the problem of social inequality and access injustice, as it is closely tied to unbalanced mobility patterns. Owning a car is costly and contributes to inequalities in urban mobility by reinforcing social status. It can also generate conflicts, arguments, and hostilities between individuals. Residents with lower incomes—or those who choose not to or cannot use a car —often rely on public transportation or active mobility options. However, urban planning that prioritizes cars can marginalize these alternatives, reducing their access to services and opportunities. This spatial exclusion fosters social fragmentation, separation, and alienation, undermining the principles of urban citizenship.
Cars also contribute to urban sprawl and housing challenges. Car-centric urban planning has historically encouraged suburban expansion, pushing residential areas farther from city centers. This has increased housing costs in walkable urban areas—where car ownership remains prevalent—and deepened socioeconomic and racial segregation by forcing lower-income residents to live farther from urban cores. In these outer areas, public transport options are often scarce, making daily life more time- and energy-intensive. This reality limits access to social, cultural, and educational opportunities, reinforcing exclusion and perpetuating the car's dominance in urban spaces.
The way urban land is used needs to be analyzed more comprehensively to better understand the spaces that shape cities. The growing physical dimensions of modern cars should also prompt reflection on our living environments from an architectural perspective. Cars and living spaces influence one another, and this research encourages personal and collective introspection on this connection.
The significance of cars extends beyond mobility; they are crucial to global economies and international geopolitical relations. For instance, the German economy, which heavily relies on its automotive sector, faces challenges such as intense competition, trade restrictions, and increasing tariffs imposed by countries like the United States, China, and Russia. Exploring these dynamics in depth would be significant enough to merit another Ph.D. project. The automotive industry remains one of the most strategic and critical aspects of the intricate global economic and geopolitical systems of today.
This research seeks to offer a refreshed perspective on the mobile future of cities—not by assigning blame, but through understanding. It argues that fostering integration requires focusing on car users to better understand their needs and behaviors. Simultaneously, it incorporates insights from architects who shape urban spaces, emphasizing the interdisciplinarity necessary for envisioning the mobile future we need.
A key aspect of this collaboration with architects lies in examining volume—the parallel growth of car sizes and living spaces. Cars have grown significantly in size, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as "car obesity," adding new spatial dimensions to the human-machine relationship. As cars expand, so do the spaces they occupy in cities. This phenomenon reflects broader themes of spatial consumption, greed, and individualism. Yet, while larger vehicles like SUVs are often criticized, we seldom question the expansion of our home spaces. Few people now live in compact, one-room apartments, raising the question: can we truly blame SUVs when we, too, demand more space? This connection underscores how discussions about cars inevitably intersect with the concept of space, which is fundamental to architecture. One of the key foundations of this study is to examine the relationship between cars and living spaces—their dimensional, structural, and social connections—through an architectural lens. This perspective is essential because, at its core, everything is fundamentally tied to the spaces in which we live. We should place greater focus on the intersection of cities, cars, and living spaces.
These reflections lead to an essential question about the future of urban mobility: how can it be reimagined? Cities must engage in deeper discussions about the role and presence of cars. The construction of additional highways should be reconsidered, and greater emphasis should be placed on creating urban environments that prioritize pedestrian safety, cycling, and micromobility solutions. Shifting from car dominance to multimodal, inclusive, and sustainable transportation systems is key. A city is only as accessible and livable as its infrastructure allows. Movement is the lifeblood of a modern, functional city—a city that thrives on speed but is not defined solely by it.
In the Swiss referendum, November 24, 2024, the federal decision for the expansion phase of national roads was rejected, with 52.70% voting No.
Photos taken on November 13, Basel.
PROCESS
IUR 2024 has played a significant role in the development of this research. In this section, key topics, questions, and interpretations from the process will be shared. Additionally, my personal notes taken during these sessions presented shortly in the next images as part of the documentation. The research proposal has been developed primarily by focusing on one or more of the questions raised during this process and, on a personal level, throughout much of my life. This approach seeks to uncover specific and previously unattained insights.
Urban landscapes are dynamic canvases shaped by a myriad of forces, from evolving technologies to human behaviors and cultural narratives. This research emerges from a diverse set of questions, each probing the multifaceted relationship between cities, mobility, and human agency that surfaced during the IUR process. These inquiries explore how interdisciplinary urban research can deepen the anthropological dimensions of our understanding, interrogate the methodologies that guide us from “what” to “how,” and challenge conventional perceptions of urban space.
Cars, as pivotal elements of modern urbanism, have inspired several of these questions. How do they reshape our cities and the way we see them? As material objects and spatial practices, how do they influence social identity? Can we think of cars as "unfinished urbanisms," or even as gendered entities? The project's scope extends to examining cars as agents of change, material legacies, and symbols within countercultural iconographies. It asks: how do cars and homes coexist typologically within architectural contexts? And how does living with cars alter our ways of life?
Central to the inquiry is the interplay between research and experience. Questions like “Can research itself be an experience?” and “How does our own background become the methodology itself?” emphasize the subjective and methodological aspects of the research. Similarly, the project seeks to untangle the social, physical, and psychological dimensions of city-car interactions, exploring whether cars act as "social cages" or serve as interfaces mediating urban life. Questions such as “What is the social anatomy of driving?”, “Can the driver be seen as a hyper-technological nomad?”, and “What role does the car play in urban metabolism?” have significantly shaped its evolving inquiry. Through these questions, the research situates itself at the intersection of urban design, sociology, and mobility studies. By unpacking the city spatially and developing active research methods, it aims to reimagine the role of inclusive mobility, materiality, and human agency in shaping urban futures. This collection of inquiries serves as both the inspiration and the foundation of this evolving exploration and delves into the dynamics of a moving society.
Click for Miro Board of the research MIRO BOARD
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