The fascination with speed has significantly influenced modern architectural design, shaping both the form and function of structures throughout the 20th century. This connection between fast-moving machines and buildings emerged from early 20th-century artistic movements and has persisted as a source of inspiration for architects seeking to inject dynamism and innovation into their work.

The roots of this influence can be traced to Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s 1909 Manifesto of Futurism, which celebrated the beauty and power of modern machinery—steamers, locomotives, and airplanes. Marinetti’s poetic vision extended beyond literature, resonating in the visual arts and architecture. One notable early proponent was Antonio Sant’Elia, whose visionary designs envisioned multi-level cities integrated with new infrastructure for transportation. Although his career was cut short by World War I, Sant’Elia’s dynamic architectural concepts influenced prominent figures like Le Corbusier and Richard Rogers.

Architectural responses to speed typically manifest in two ways. The first involves designing buildings that directly accommodate fast-moving vehicles and related infrastructure, such as airports or factories. A historical example is the Lingotto factory in Turin, completed in 1928, which famously incorporated a test track on its rooftop to facilitate automobile testing. The second approach adopts the aesthetic and symbolic qualities of speed, with buildings visually echoing planes, trains, or automobiles despite their static nature. This approach serves as a form of architectural expression, offering a sense of movement and modernity.

Le Corbusier, writing in his 1923 work Towards an Architecture, observed that car design involved a pursuit of beauty and harmony that went beyond mere practicality. His architectural work similarly merged historical elements with modern industrial forms, combining inspiration from Greek temples, grain silos, bridges, and ocean liners. In the 1930s, the Streamline Moderne subset of Art Deco explicitly embraced the imagery of speed, applying aerodynamic curves and horizontal lines to cinemas, factories, bus stations, and residential buildings.

From the 1960s onward, British high-tech architects further advanced these ideas, drawing on engineering and aviation for inspiration. Norman Foster, a pilot himself, endeavored to translate the lightweight, efficient structures of aircraft into his architectural projects. His former colleague Jan Kaplický and partner Amanda Levete pushed these concepts even further, designing futuristic buildings based on spacecraft. One example is the media center at Lord’s cricket ground, completed in the late 1990s, whose UFO-like form was created using yacht-building techniques and has since become a notable architectural landmark.

While there is an inherent contradiction in applying the logic of speed to immobile objects like buildings, proponents argue that this paradox fuels creativity and leads to some of the most captivating architectural achievements. The romance of speed offers architects a conceptual escape from the constraints of static construction, fueling innovative designs that continue to resonate as symbols of technological progress and modernity.