Lowrider Culture emerged in Southern California during the 1950’s, as a phenomenon which renegotiates the urban landscape and proposes new paradigms for experiencing the city. The resourceful processes of lowering vintage cars not only created new aesthetic regimes and cultural dispositions, but new datums and alignments between the driver, passengers, and the city through the act of intentional slowness. As one drives these lowered cars, it creates a closer relationship between the street and the individual, and redefines ones participation in the urban fabric.
Cruising - the lowriding term for driving through the city low and slow (Bajito y Suavecito) is as much an attitude about urban occupation, as it is a way of living. In lowrider culture, the automobile is more than a means of transportation; it is a method of expressing various forms of individuality, material interest, and spatial orientation.
With the car as an accomplice, this p roject explores the potential of lowrider practices to rethink the telescopic relationships between how we live, and how we live in cities; beginning with a modification of program in the domestic realm, and migrating out to the organizations and interactions between, neighbors, blocks and the urban fabric at large.