Document Type
Thesis Prep
Degree
B. ARCH
Date
12-2015
Keywords
highway, network, automobiles, truck stop, truck driving, instant city, transient dwelling lifestyle
Language
english
Disciplines
Architecture
Description/Abstract
The American highway is nationly used for commerce and commuting, but it creates diverse lifestyles as well. The cross-country highway and road trip are deeply rooted in the American psyche, supported the vast Federal Highway Network and the rapid growth in ownership of automobiles by American families since the 1940s, establishing a sense of freedom in their mobile lifestyles. Other highway users have less control over their daily routine.
Truck drivers spend a majority of their times on the road, while the remaining part of their day is spent sleeping in fixed truck cabins or eating at all-night truck stops. This thesis reconsiders the truck stop along the U.S. freeways, by studying the transport network at multiple scales, including truck drivers’ daily routines and their live-work practices.
The truck stop’s narrow focus on providing limited and costly services to truck drivers, constitutes a missed opportunity to re-conceive of such infrastructure, as well as the truck cabin itself as flexible and transitory. Connected by the existing American highway network, these infrastructures should not only better address truck drivers’ needs, but can promote a transitional lifestylebased on mobility. This thesis proposes the truck stop as a core element of a future instant city designed to create a new transient dwelling lifestyle.
Recommended Citation
Teng, Kathy, "Private Room on the Wheel" (2015). Architecture Thesis Prep. 305.
https://surface.syr.edu/architecture_tpreps/305
Source
Syracuse School of Architecture 2015
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
