Transport Design: A Travel History

Abstract

Transport Design is the first design history to investigate the experience of travel, analysing the vehicle from the passengers' and drivers' points of view. Gregory Votolato takes us inside a wide range of vehicles, from buses and limousines to dugout canoes and 'superferries', to aircraft such as the Graf Zeppelin and the Apollo spacecraft. Organised in three parts air, land and sea Transport Design shows how the design of a vehicle shapes our experience of the journey, from home to work, or from the earth to the stars. In an authoritative yet accessible style, Votolato explores the relationship between mass transportation and the travel experience, taking into account the pressures of global commerce and global warming, and argues for a radical reappraisal of how and why we travel. Themes explored include comfort, safety, technology, style, economics, customization and entertainment, acknowledging along the way the contributions of important individuals, such as entrepreneur George Mortimer Pullman and the ship designer Dorothy Marckwald. Throughout, Votolato encourages us to see and to question our travel experiences in relation to the design of the vehicles in which we travel. Apparent banalities, such as the travel seat, are revealed as having great significance: from Theodore Woodruff's nineteenth-century railway sleeping compartments to Marc Newson's sleeping pods for long-haul flyers, or today's ergonomically contoured and electronically adjustable car seats, furniture designed for transportation has consistently led the furnishings of homes and offices in the technology they employ to provide personally tailored comfort, the Holy Grail of transport design. For the reader interested in how we travel, or for the designers of our future vehicles, Gregory Votolato provides an insightful, readable and often entertaining account of two centuries of travel design.

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