Raum-Maschine Reichsautobahn

Few structures shape our environment like the highway. Its solid roadways, wide lines, and its intersection-free network form a system without which no supermarket, commercial area, or pedestrian zone can function. Although the Nazis are well-known not to have invented the highway, the foundation for the European main traffic route was concreted into the landscape from 1934 to 1942. What was researched, planned, built, and experienced in the vicinity of the Reichsautobahn—between joint sealing compounds, aerial images, rest areas, and the Reich Party Congress grounds—has thus become an irrevocable part of German construction and technology history. In the connection of the details, this historical project also proves to be, and this has been overlooked for long enough, nothing less than the first design of our currently permanently mobilized transit landscape during this era.