Rights of Way: Mobility and the City JAMES GRAHAM + MEREDITH MILLER, curator BSA SPACE, Boston December 5, 2013 - May 26, 2014 The world is made up of a network of cities, which we move through every day. Our movement through the city requires different scales of infrastructure, from underground subway lines and elevated highways to bike paths and pedestrian plazas, ultimately shaping the public space that we inhabit. Rights of Way: Mobility and the City, on view now at the BSA Space, is a ‘future-oriented’ exhibition that asks us to rethink the ways we move through a city by presenting a range of new technologies, practices, prototypes, and proposals, as well as a documentation of the history of mobility and the city. The show’s curators, James Graham and Meredith Miller of MILLIGRAM-office, organize the show based on this range of work into five parts: 3 Urban Futures, 7 Ideas About Mobility and the City, 16+ Prototypes, 143 Mobility Practices, and 50 Years of Megalopolis: A Timeline. In order to get an overview of the evolution of ideas on mobility and the city, begin your sequence through the show with 50 Years of Megalopolis: A Timeline. Located on the second floor and marked by a bright yellow floor-to-ceiling wall graphic, this chronological timeline gives an outline over the past fifty years of “visionary urban planning” of the Northeastern Corridor from Boston to Washington, a megalopolis known as ‘BosWash.’ The timeline runs along a back-lit strip at eye height along the perimeter of the space, glowing in front of the windows that look out onto the streets of downtown Boston. As one follows the chronological strip, the development of BosWash is presented with historical photographs, important dates, and descriptions that mark significant moments that influenced and shaped this continuous metropolitan. Most memo-
Top 50 Years of Megalopolis: A Timeline glowing in front of views of the city. Bottom Bright yellow arrows help lead you through the exhibition sequence.
rable was the section on the 1960 MoMA Visionary Architects Exhibition, showing ideas and drawings of utopian cities and structures, which compare and contrast with the proposals shown in 3 Urban Futures. Metro-Linear City of 1957, by Irish architect, Reginald Malcolmson, suggests urban development along “vertebrae” transportation routes, bordered
experience, like “Motorbike Poncho,” a covering made for a two-person scooter that protects them from rain, or the “Ostrich Pillow,” a plush covering that one wears over their head to create a comfortable light and sound barrier for sleeping when traveling. The curious photographs from around the world provide examples for how public space and mobility networks are interpreted and manipulated by those who use them – an appropriate segue to the most fascinating part of the show: 3 Urban Futures. These three proposals were created by three architecture firms for the 2012 Audi Urban Future Award, which asks for a vision of the city of 2030, with an emphasis on how mobility and technology might influence changes for the future. The three urban futures on display rethink how infrastructure works for the BosWash Corridor in the United States, the Pearl River Delta in Shenzen, China, and the sprawling megacity of São Paulo, Brazil. A map of the world is presented so that those who aren’t familiar with these megaregions are aware of their location. Large wall graphics of infrastructure dia-
Top Display of 143 phtoographs, videos, products, and garments that survey the use and misuse of urban networks of movement. Bottom Ostrich Pillow among other products enhancing one’s mobile experience.
with housing and manufacturing sites, emphasizing the important role that infrastructure had on future expansion. The timeline terminates at 143 Mobility Practices, featuring an array of photographs, objects, and videos that all look at the ways in which people use urban networks of movement in different regions of the world. Fourteen white, counter-height stands display these mobility practices, with each stand focusing on a different topic. For example, one stand is titled “Mobility Prosthetics”, showing quirky products and garments made to enhance the mobile
Above Section through São Paulo by firm Urban Think Tank focusing on shared space from residual infrastructures.
grams, futuristic renderings, and highly illustrated sectional perspectives cut through an entire urban center show these architect’s imaginations on how systems of mobility can create new public space. Boston architects, Höweler + Yoon, propose the BosWash Shareway as a “prototype for the next American Dream,” consisting of a series of solutions for the highway and rail systems of the region. One strategy suggests a bundled “infrastructural spine” that allows sharing and interchanging across numerous types of transportation. In addition to axonometric diagrams that depict what this would look like, animations are projected on the wall, zooming in and out to show detailed scenes of how the system actually works. Blue plaques with ‘what if’ scenarios challenge traditional thought on present-day transportation systems, while offering innovative solutions.
Right 3 Urban Futures posed ‘what if’ questions that challenge assumptions on transportation. Bottom Futuristic rendering of the “Tripanel” system by architects, Höweler + Yoon.
The exhibition provides insight for future opportunities to create a better balanced flow of goods, vehicles, and people by linking large-scale highway, rail, airport, and ferry infrastructures. This work suggests that urban design should adapt as cities and technologies evolve. Rights of Way manages to successfully alter our conception of mobility by presenting new typologies for a mobile city, which favor porosity over the rigidity of the current state of infrastructure, while visually portraying the new forms of interactions and experiences that can be generated by designing fluid connections of shared space. Katherine Ginn, February 2014