This article was originally published on Domus 1090, May 2024
Not much more than a century ago, our towns and cities were full of stables and blacksmiths’ forges, where the horses that pulled carriages, carts and hansom cabs were fed hay and fitted with iron shoes. Gradually they were replaced by places where cars could be refuelled. Now perhaps those, too, are on the verge of becoming obsolete.
Giuseppe Pettazzi, Fiat Tagliero, Asmara Eritrea, 1938
Photo by David Stanley on Flickr
Angelo Bianchetti, Pavesi rest stop on the Milano - Laghi, Italy, 1958
Courtesy Arch. Jan Jacopo Bianchetti Archive
R. W. Lindholm Service Station Frank Lloyd Wright, Cloquet Minnesota USA, 1958
Photo by McGhiever on wikimedia commons
Melchiorre Bega, Il Mottagrill di Cantagallo, Autostrada del sole, Italia, 1960
Photo by Albertomos on wikimedia commons
Albert Frey and Robson Chambers, Tramway Gas Station, Palm Springs, California 1965
Photo by Kansas Sebastian on Flickr
William Pereira, 76 Station a Beverly Hills, Los Angeles USA, 1965
Photo by Chris Lott on Flickr
Mies van der Rohe, former Île des Sœurs station, Montréal, Canada, 1969
Photo by Kate McDonnell on wikimedia commons
Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, Exxon Gas Station per Disney World, Orlando, Florida USA, 1995
From Domus 787, November 1996
Norman Foster, Repsol service stations, Spagna, 1998
Photo by Chesgv on wikimedia commons
Giuseppe Pettazzi, Fiat Tagliero, Asmara Eritrea, 1938
Photo by David Stanley on Flickr
Angelo Bianchetti, Pavesi rest stop on the Milano - Laghi, Italy, 1958
Courtesy Arch. Jan Jacopo Bianchetti Archive
R. W. Lindholm Service Station Frank Lloyd Wright, Cloquet Minnesota USA, 1958
Photo by McGhiever on wikimedia commons
Melchiorre Bega, Il Mottagrill di Cantagallo, Autostrada del sole, Italia, 1960
Photo by Albertomos on wikimedia commons
Albert Frey and Robson Chambers, Tramway Gas Station, Palm Springs, California 1965
Photo by Kansas Sebastian on Flickr
William Pereira, 76 Station a Beverly Hills, Los Angeles USA, 1965
Photo by Chris Lott on Flickr
Mies van der Rohe, former Île des Sœurs station, Montréal, Canada, 1969
Photo by Kate McDonnell on wikimedia commons
Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, Exxon Gas Station per Disney World, Orlando, Florida USA, 1995
From Domus 787, November 1996
Norman Foster, Repsol service stations, Spagna, 1998
Photo by Chesgv on wikimedia commons
Most petrol stations aren’t things ofbeauty. But in a village called Birstall in Leicestershire, in the English Midlands, there’s the last survivor of the “Pegasus”stations designed in the 1960s by Eliot Noyes. Each of the six stands of pumpsis shaded by a circular canopy supported by a single pillar, like a parasol. It’s a space-age concept, and very evocative of its time, but somehow it still seems as futuristic as it did when the design came off the drawing board.
It was American artist Ed Ruscha who persuaded us to look at petrol stations in a different way. In 1963, when gasoline cost 30 cents per gallon in the USA, every car had a V8 engine and the supply of oil seemed inexhaustible, he created a book of photographs called Twenty six Gasoline Stations.
All in black and white, the images are presented in the leporello format, a folding book that opens like a concertina. Captions locating the stations in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma are the only text. When it was first published, in an edition of 400 copies, you could buy it for 3 dollars. I’ve just seen a copy of that first edition, signed by the artist but with a badly torn cover, on offer for 4,000 dollars.
When something comes along to replace petrol stations, whether to charge the batteries of electric cars or to fill the tanks of hydrogen-powered vehicles, or to supply some form of energy production we haven’t thought of yet, perhaps there will be artists with the imagination of an Eliot Noyes and the eye of an Ed Ruschato create and make us see the beauty that can lie beyond their everyday function.