Architecture in Uniform - Josh Rothman

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2011/12/architecture_in.html

The war forced architects to innovate and improvise, and its scale meant that, postwar, the results were spread across the globe. Look around the world today, and you can see the legacy of the Second World War everywhere. During the war, military manufacturers needed huge, windowless buildings large enough to hide aircraft manufacturing; today, the same sorts of structures are used for "big box" stores and factories everywhere. During the war, buildings often had to be prefabricated; today, prefab houses and sheds are in nearly every American town. Inspired by the Jeep -- an off-road vehicle first built for the war, in 1941 -- postwar auto designers moved away from the heavily-ornamented, luxury aesthetic of the prewar automobile, and started designing simpler, more utilitarian-looking cars. "Domestic interiors," Cohen writes, "were influenced by the compact spaces created in vehicles, airplanes, and ships."