As Los Angeles grew from small town to major city during the 20th Century, it became a living laboratory for all aspects of urban design, from architecture to the freeway system, furniture to automobile design. In the mid-century, questions of form and function, and the consideration of light and movement through space, received more radical consideration from architects and urban planners than from most artists of that time; and indeed their work came to exert tremendous influence on succeeding generations of artists.