Garage as Cultural Nexus: Erlanger and Govela's MIT Press Book

The MIT Press has published 'Garage', a book by artist Olivia Erlanger and architect Luis Ortega Govela that examines the garage as a pivotal space in American cultural history. The authors trace its evolution from Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House (1910) in Chicago, which featured three garages as portals to modern life, to its role as the birthplace of Silicon Valley in Palo Alto, California, where Hewlett Packard and later Apple were founded. They introduce the concept of 'garageification of space', a symbiotic process blurring private, domestic, and work spheres, with implications for biopolitics, aesthetics, and sociology. The book critiques the Silicon Valley model, linking it to individualism, competition, and anxiety within neocapitalism. The final chapter, 'Deprogrammed Garage', offers an alternative: the collective space of Fabio Sargentini's Attico gallery in Rome, which used a garage on Via Beccaria as a public exhibition space, notably hosting Jannis Kounellis's live horses. The authors advocate for inclusion and empathy over the myth of the solitary genius. Published in 2018, the 224-page book costs $21.95.