AMERICA’S VANISHING HIGHWAY REST AREAS
In 2020, the very notion of “rest” itself is an underserved concept (the enemy of the rest stop, who also happens to be the enemy of truth, love and beauty, is the guy in the car obsessed with making “good time”). The simple act of resting gets very little respect in our profit-obsessed culture, particularly as a matter of architecture or public policy. It speaks of a cataclysmic generational trauma that the smooth sidewalks and simple flower beds of a rest stop could strike me as something so alien and unusual—a completely actualized piece of architecture that is here for all of us, for free. It’s a precious thing, to imagine all the skill and labor poured into a building that is nothing more than a small hut for people to just hang out in for a while, bathroom included, with flower beds whose borders just so happen to be the perfect height in a 1957 issue:
