The Architecture of Transit, Sue Barr

Searching for the Sublime in Motorway Architecture Between the Alps and Naples.
Motorways are architectural megastructures  in the landscape, crossing nations, natural  or political borders, and making previously  remote places accessible to development.  Between the Alps and Naples motorways  connect highly complex topographies and  urban conditions, often retracing antique  trade paths and routes taken by northern  Romantics on the Grand Tour, searching for  arcadian and sublime landscapes as painted by de Loutherbourg, Claude, and Turner. The experience of the sublime in untamed  nature became a highlight on the Grand Tour. In those days the journey took days; today we speed through the landscapes via motorways over concrete bridges, ramps, through galleries and tunnels. But with this speed comes a new accelerated and simultaneously calm  sublime of concrete motorway megastructures against the backdrop of constantly changing landscapes and cities. Sue Barr, Head of Pho-tography at the Architectural Association (AA), London, is a photographer obsessed with con-crete and Brutalist architecture. On countless journeys from the Alps to Naples she took the carefully constructed pictures for her first monographic publication and documented the omnious beauty of motorway architecture, within landscapes and urban spaces.