Architect Rafael Pina, from the ARKRIT Collective, presents an article comparing two prestigious German automotive brands and their effort to project, also through architecture, an image of modernity and power. These museums belong to a lineage of spectacular architecture, seeking to inspire admiration and surprise through showmanship across various dimensions: formal, technological, and financial.
Ever since Karl Friedrich Benz introduced his first internal combustion engine model in 1886 and showcased it at the Munich Exhibition of Machinery and Operators in 1888, the automobile quickly became an object of cult status and desire. Perhaps no other invention has exerted such an intense, long-lasting appeal. Sportiness, freedom, elegance, and glamour were, among others, desirable qualities for a society attracted to progress and modernity—qualities that these new mobile machines were able to embody like no other. Consequently, manufacturers realized that automotive design held an enormous power of seduction and, as a result, a powerful means of attracting admirers and potential customers.
