(Written for Architecture 671, 1/97)

My initial reaction on being asked my favorite place was one of futility--how to sort out only one place? My mind raced through a list of candidates: Wexner Center, New York City, the Cuyahoga Valley, St. Louis, Ives Hall Center Space. How to decide which one was my favorite? Almost out of desperation (and a wry sense of humor), I picked my car; it was practically a cop-out answer.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it actually was true. The car is my favorite place. First, because it allows me to get to all the different places I listed above, as well as any other destination I choose. I've driven everywhere from Manhattan to Boston to Houston to Lincoln, and I don't plan on stopping these road trips until they pry my car keys from unwilling fingers.

But the car-as-transportation is just that: transportation. No different from a bus, a train, or an airplane. But a car is more than that, or else my favorite place would have to be any mode of transportation. In the end, my car is just that: my car. I'm free there--I can do whatever I want to it, as long as it still runs (even in my house there's my landlord setting rules). My car is dirty, filled with trash except for the driver's seat--I don't have that freedom in my house. In that sense, I can personalize my car at least as much as I personalize my house. Bumper stickers, paint jobs, vanity plates, etc: it's as Rybczynski said--the car is supplanting (or already has supplanted) the house as an artifact of personality. The car, then, is my personal articulation of a gateway to limitless destinations; a truly mobile home.

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