A new lease on life for drive-in and drive-thru architecture

2020-05-06T14:09:00-04:00

Before the coronavirus crisis, the drive-through had been fast losing status, often deployed as a symbol of obesity and the worst of car-dependent urban design. In many cities, it had been subject to outright bans. The drive-in, meanwhile, is nearly extinct, with just a few still operating in Southern California. But during the pandemic, drive-throughs have become a weird sort of societal glue. And the drive-in has been reconsidered.

Writing in The Los Angeles Times, journalist and critic Carolina Miranda takes a look at the renewed significance of drive-thru and drive-in spaces in Los Angeles during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Miranda writes, "Their architectural standoffish-ness, in which vendor and client interact largely via speaker and remain in their own environments during an entire transaction, is designed to prioritize efficiency and minimize human exchange. They are the socially distant design we’ve been living with all along."

Miranda goes on to detail Reyner Banham's drive-in exploits in Los Angeles, Richard Neutra's drive-in church in Orange County, and the more recent phenomenon of drive-in concerts.

Kickstart: The American Drive-in Movie Theater

2012-03-27T19:27:00-04:00

Drive-ins symbolize the romance of the open road, of Hollywood movies, and for many, memories of romance itself. I’ve been making photographs of drive-in theaters for more than a decade now. Every theater is unique, but there are repeating visual themes like the giant white rectangle of the screen, that relate to and resonate with the enormously varied American landscape.

Help support Carl Weese photo-document the iconic drive-in movie theaters before they are wiped off the American landscape.

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A new lease on life for drive-in and drive-thru architecture

Kickstart: The American Drive-in Movie Theater