Topic Infrastructure as a Spatial Category Title From Object line to Vector field – the social instrument Author Rahul Paul Abstract Infrastructure - ‘the underlying foundation (as of a system or organization)1 and Urbanism comprehended ‘as a way of life’2 have been understood as mutually exclusive or as existing in some dialectical relationship with each other. This tension is generated from the fact that infrastructure is typically understood in reference to its ‘logistical functioning’, and Urbanism as a ‘spatial configuration’ – thus equating infrastructure within the urban realm as ‘an artefact that exists for the sake of a technical program.’3 The paper seeks to redefine ‘infrastructure’ from a static tool into a dynamic instrument – an operative and performative medium of flows that reconfigures itself from an ‘object line’ to a ‘vector field’ within the urban realm. Infrastructure is conceived here as a “technically and spatially controlled sieve”4 which must be able to not only receive and manage information, but also generate organizations and protocol and eventually move towards the expression of materiality. In order to conceive infrastructure as a spatial ‘vector field’, the paper explores not only the potentials and possibilities formulated by contemporary practice in response to rapidly shifting modes of production and precarious ecologies but also investigates the relational negotiations, verbalized by traditional infrastructural systems borne out of generic human tendencies towards productivity and topographical engagement - an examination of ‘technical solutions’ that embraces issues of sustainability, context and cultural relationships to formulate a spatial condition. To articulate infrastructure as a spatial category, it is conceptualized both as a material product and a medium that can affect social relations.5 Firstly, infrastructure is perceived through the notion of contingency - a characteristic which takes in account the complexity within certain perceivable systems, material or social, natural or cultural - thus, operating by accommodating local intelligence while striving towards overall continuity. Secondly, through the strategy of thickening the surface – a multi layered field of action that invokes the functioning matrix of connective tissue that organizes not only objects and spaces but also the dynamic processes and events that move through them. Hence infrastructure operates as the active urban/landscape spatial field, structuring the conditions for new relationships and interactions among the things it supports.6 Through these operational mediums, and by precise interventions following from rigorous analysis that embraces the latent and accidental, infrastructure performs as a ‘catalytic social condenser’ - which acts not by resolving conflicts, but by setting up the conditions from which negotiations might begin to withstand the excess of popular culture – restless mobility, consumption, density, waste, spectacle, and information.
Keywords Infrastructure/Urbanism/Space/Landscape/Surface.
1
Merriam Webster’s Dictionary Writh Louis, The American Journal of Sociology, Vol 44, No 1, pg 2, July 1938. 3 Berrizbeita, Anna and Pollack, Linda, inside outside: between architecture and landscape, pg 152, 1999, Rockport, Mass. 4 Mostafavi, Mohsen and Najile, Ciro, ed., Landscape Urbanism: A Manual for Machinic Landscape, pg 141, 2003, Architectural Association. 5 Lefebvre, Henri, The Production of Space, translated by Donald Nicholson Smith, pg 72, 1991, Blackwell. 6 Wall, Alex, Programming the Urban Surface, in Corner, James ed., Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture, pg 233, 1999, Princeton Architectural Press 2
Infrastruktururbanismus
Technische Universität München, Institute for Urban Design, Urbanism and Landscape
Introduction: Re-examining the standardized system Urbanism, comprehended ‘as the way of life’1, has to do with the collective experience qualities that describe the ecology of human habitation. The formulation of such experiences arguably is produced in society through ‘constructed situations’ - a moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organization of a unitary ambiance and a game of events2. This constructed situation, what can be termed as ‘space’ is perceived as a potential where humans would interact together as people and not mediated by commodities. ‘Space’ – an experiential field shaped by emotional and rational tendencies of human behaviour enhanced by the coordination of artistic and scientific means to serve a unitary action that would lead to the total fusion of the social sphere. The spatial notion that subjects the configuration of urbanism has in most cases been least explored through the infrastructural object which has been designed, planned and implemented as ‘an artefact that exists for the sake of a technical program’3 – a ‘standardized’ landscape in the urban field. If categorized through Eugene Odum’s compartmentalization of the total landscape, ‘infrastructure’ would most best fit in the category which he classifies as ‘the area, where succession is continually retarded by human controls to maintain high levels of productivity.’4 Production that is not qualitative, but more quantitative, that would dictate and account for a homogeneous order towards expressing a democratic society. As landscape architect Kathy Poole states “Through roughly 150 years of industrialization we have come to believe that the politics of efficiency are beyond question and that standardization is the ultimate expression of democracy” 5
Image 1 - The technically efficient object
The above statement possibly best exemplifies as to what infrastructure has been able to or directed to achieve through its increase standardization as they met with higher technical efficiency. Infrastructure as a system or an object has always been given an autonomous technical priority over the landscape (socio–ecological field) in which it has to be inserted, thus some how exempting from having to function socially, aesthetically, or ecologically. This ‘logistical’ exemption potentially excuses as to why infrastructure as a medium has not been holistically or has been partially networked within the key concepts of urbanism. Thus, expressing infrastructure as a mutually exclusive or existing in a dialectical relationship with the notion of urbanism. If interpreted in the words of Guattari ‘they are mentally (and physically) manipulated through the production of collective, mass subjectivity, they are nevertheless developing (or made to develop) their own methods of distancing themselves from normalized subjectivity through singularization.’6
Image 2 – Broadacre Project 1930
A condition of singularization and disengagement that has been reflected ordially since the planning principles of the Modernist period where standardization inspired by individual aesthetic creation created a disjunction in the everyday life. An illustrative case in this regard is the 1930’s Broadacre project, by Frank Lloyd Wright, which relied on mass production, industrialized construction systems and more importantly on a sweeping conception of how a rationalized urban space might emerge when linked through technically derived infrastructures.7
Such prevailing reductionist approach towards infrastructure has advocated it to be realized as an ‘isolated and repressed singularity (ies) that is (are) just turning in circles’8 within the urban realm - a partial locus of singularizartion which remains rather than behaves within the given homogenous set. The re-examination of such infrastructural capacity requires the rethinking of the mono – functional realm of infrastructure and its rescue from the limbo of
Infrastruktururbanismus
Technische Universität München, Institute for Urban Design, Urbanism and Landscape
urban devastation to recognize its role as a part of the formal inhabited city.9 In relation to current shifting modes of production, precarious ecologies and uneven social geography this would suggest an instrumental engagement with ecological systems as well as with the function of infrastructure and the social and cultural needs of the community. A transcending of infrastructure to be a medium which is constructed by society and also which constructs society where the strict lines of human geometry and production of efficiency are allowed to deform to incorporate, rather than neutralize, biological networks.10 This reconceptualization of the infrastructure systems as potentials to construct Urbanism lies in two folds. Firstly, by relooking infrastructure through a perfomative landscape lens and secondly by suggesting new modes of operation that would essentially deconstruct these systems as spaces of differences which would formulate a transitional scale of operation that would negotiate between complementary strategies to produce dynamic relationships.11
Performative Infrastructure: deterritoralizing as a medium In order to break away from the mono – functional quality and the homogenized expression of the infrastructural object, a radical reconceptualizaition of the ‘production’ capacity of such systems needs to be strategized, that would not just produce logistical efficiency but couple with multiscalar forces in a given field to articulate the production of space. Towards an ‘infrastructural urbanism’ that will conceive and create structures for human activity in previously nonexistent juxtapositions and catalysing combinations on the floor (meaning on the surface of the earth).12 The deterritoralization of infrastructure towards a more openended, directional trajectory of organization –as a prototype element which does not ‘allocate’ but ‘distributes’13 to sustain a promiscuous proliferation of events in the urban field and also towards the production of urbanism. The idea of the ‘prototype’ has been a current field of research in academia that define such landscapes as ‘first or primary type of something that triggers further reactions, processes and events. They do not sit in isolation, but are networked into space and society.’14 Ciro Najile and Mohsen Mostafavi, in the Landscape Urbanism: a manual for machinic landscapes ventures a working condition for the prototype and describes them as a “technically controlled sieve” which must be able not only to receive and manage information, but also generate organizations and protocol and eventually move towards the expression of materiality and fine scale details.15Planning by such a prototype can be anarchic, an alternative to master planning, or can embrace master planning and change it from within. It could work with the complex urban web characteristic of what Castells describes as the network society (1999) and Deleuze and Guattari refer to as the rhizome (1987).16
Image 3 – Organization through prototype
This landscape prototype can accept political, sociological, economic and other differences and uncertainties and work with them and negotiate their development over time. It can exist as a tool for negotiation or comhrá.17 This prototype landscape can be temporary or permanent, it can be big or they can be small or multiscalar in distribution. Infrastructure systems, in this case as the prototype can facilitate a change and dialogue and action over time across multiple disciplines and potentialize to be situated, moved, hybridised, proliferated and deleted as negotiations progress. The ripples caused by this prototype could facilitate an ongoing catalysis as new possibilities and opportunities unfold over time and space. Through such a lens of landscape performance, infrastructure returns to a model of programmatic alchemy. 18 A return to complex and instrumental infrastructural system strategies that involves more organizational and strategic skills than those of formal compositions per se, more programmatic and metrical practices than solely technical.
Infrastruktururbanismus
Technische Universität München, Institute for Urban Design, Urbanism and Landscape
Under such a performative rubric, issues such as program, event, space, utility, economy, logistics, production, constraints and desires become fore grounded, each turned through infrastructural articulation towards newly productive and significant ends to comprehend urbanism. The organizational concepts of infrastructure as prototype landscapes are further discussed and explored by conceiving it firstly through the notion of contingency and secondly through the concept of thickening the surface – the notion of the constructed ground.
Image 4 – Generating a prototype catalyst
Through these precise interventions, following from rigorous analysis that embraces the latent and accidental as well as the obvious, infrastructure as the prototype landscape, is perceived to bear a real potential in the resolution of conflicts between the local and the global, not by resolving them, but by setting up the conditions from which negotiations and developments (or non-developments), may begin.
Contingency: the operational threshold Contingency is defined as a characteristic which takes in account not only the complexity within certain perceivable systems, material or social, natural or cultural, but also the arbitrariness in what systems and phenomenon are actual within a certain time or space.19 Infrastructure systems, if perceived through the theoretical contexts of contingency potentializes as “continuums or hybrids – of spaces in-between – instead of opposing dualities” through which it can translate the participating territory into a “smooth space - a hierarchical, decentralized…..that of oscillating relationships, always addressing through their simultaneity multiple dimensions.”20 In essence, infrastructure tends to behave towards interpretive infinity, for the effect of resisting fixity is not insignificance, but semantic plurality. It looks out on new social circumstances: a dispersed and differentiated reality that marks the end to the utopia of homogenization, to a certain extent. To conceive infrastructure through such an operative lens is to foresee a strategy of urban arrangement following which the empty space) connects the built-up structures in a whole so that, it ensures the permeability of currents in the field of active forces and a constantly open opportunity for new arrangements. Infrastructure as such a spatial construct conceives an urbanism that is created in an additive way so that no higher level of spatial organisation, except of networks, is given simultaneously in advance. The whole is composed of an infinite number of situations of the same kind which repeat themselves through different measures of space by combining smaller patterns into a larger one. Such cellular structure is developed and managed by local arrangements between the new and existing parts within a particular field. The wholeness of structure is defined by relationships between the neighbouring identities in different fields which are autonomous with regard to their surroundings.
Image 5 – Ronda de Dalt, Barcelona
Infrastruktururbanismus
Such a strategy articulated by perceiving infrastructure as continuums of collector and distributor is appropriated distinctly in the second beltway of Barcelona, completed for the 1992 Olympics. The Ronda de Dalt was conceived to achieve not the highest through capacity of vehicles but the highest capacity of collection and distribution among local and regional transportation networks. The design also created opportunities to reconfigure the local conditions for new programs and open spaces. New parks and recreational areas are designed into the system, linking once isolated housing estates to larger public spaces. Thus, the significance of the design of the highway is less its scenic and efficiency value that the infrastructures capacity to stimulate and support new forms of urban space.
Technische Universität München, Institute for Urban Design, Urbanism and Landscape
The Moll de la Fusta, where the highway aligns with the waterfront, illustrates the variety of the public spaces that can be achieved through the articulation of infrastructure as a contingent - a possible event, occurrence or result. The articulation of the road morphology as ‘contingent’ infrastructure systems constitutes an urbanism that transforms the city in radical ways and provides it with a new operative and experiential identity. In addition, it reestablishes a morphological continuity of the urban fabric that rapidly overcomes the social and the physical disruptions of the often violent construction effort. The association of infrastructure with natural systems also begins to indicate a contingency characteristic that triggers complex organizational potentials incorporating a sense of time and change over time and project the participation and consensus of multiple of agents. Such an association suggests a means of developing urban strategies through the development of networks of landscapes infrastructure related to ecological systems. A comprehensive articulation of infrastructure as such an operational field is foreseen in the Bab Zaers proposal, by InDe, Bangalore, India. With the intention of making the development totally self-sufficient in terms of water needs a system of performative greenways were articulated that form the skeleton of the entire development. The system of greenways is articulated with the intention of modulating the natural surface run-off patterns of the site within which a series of small reservoirs are developed, serving as the only source of fresh water within the development. Understanding how the material process of the greenways produced, the site supported the conception of variously scaled thresholds of program, identities and performance of these greenways that extended outward from its physical footprint to engage its invisible boundaries.
Image 6 a_c – Developemnt of site infrastructure - greenways
A similar approach of such an integration of infrastructure and water management can be seen, in much smaller scale in Atleir Dreiseitl’s design for projects at Postdamer Platz in Berlin or Scharnhauser Park in Ostinger, Germany.21 These new thresholds of engagement of infrastructure and landscape formulate and participate to lend an identity of ‘processing’ to the development that occurs through encounters between technical efficieny, ecosystems, and socio-poliltical conditions. Examination of such infrastructure performances doesn’t not only limit to the above mentioned contemporary applications but can also be traced through history where associations with topographical conditions and water management verbalized the pattern of the urban arrangement. A pertinent example in this case, is the study of the ancient city of Hampi, India, presently declared as UNESCO World Heritage site. . Hampi was strongly identified with the river Tungabhadra, one of the larger river systems of peninsular India. “The point of interest is the fact that the city did not use the river as a source for its domestic water needs”22.
Image 7 – Relation of detention ponds with the citadel
Infrastruktururbanismus
Technische Universität München, Institute for Urban Design, Urbanism and Landscape
This finding along with the latter day excavations of the kunds (water tanks) or popularly known in the region as pushkarni, which harvested and stored the rain water and the surface run off of the terrain, highlight the relation that the citadel possessed with its surrounding topography and the idea of water resource management that was incorporated in the planning of the city. This underlying water management system or what is also at times referred to as the ‘hidden infrastructure’ enables the recognition of landscape infrastructure as the primary ordering device of the city which conceived the terrains by focusing on the establishment of operative systems of abstract relationships: artificial ecologies (water infrastructure) that can traverse disparate scales and areas of knowledge.
Image 8 - View of the pushkarni
In continuation to traditional infrastructure systems, an academic project ‘Relational Agri – Urban Culture’ provides an insightful approach of decoding the intelligence of such a system and operating it through the theoretical context of contingency, to generate a prototype landscape catalyst that not only redefines an existing infrastructure within the city in response to contemporary urban conditions but also reorganizes the context with which they are networked.The project re-examines the traditional dyke - ditch relationship of agricultural fields in China. The dyke – ditch relation that generates dynamic agriculture fields with respect to circumstance demands – a condition that is familiar even in the Polders landscape in the Netherlands – is reconstructed as an operative sensitive infrastructural system to engage new terms by which agriculture fields integrates with the sprawling states. The dyke – ditch infrastructure is worked within parameters of crop production, water requirement and spatial adjacencies to articulate a strategy that organizes by differential repetition a coherent relation with the built and the unbuilt. These interrelationships across the terrain not only generate a new field of engagement based on types of agriculture but also generate hierarchical intensities of programmatic associations across the region.
Image 9 – Development of the traditonal system
Image 10 – Application of the system
Through such an operational lens of contingency, infrastructure becomes a flexible and a participatory medium within the notion of urbanism. They operate with time and are open to change and by specifying what must be fixed, they become both precise and indeterminate. Through such articulation, infrastructure is creatively employed to accommodate existing conditions while striving for functional continuity. As a vector field, it itself works strategically and encourages a possible realization of a new unifying concept of ecology, which offers as a way of organising the apparently random mix of ‘geography, climate, economics, demography mechanics and culture.’23 It conceives a process of urbanism that is a cumulative result of countless individual operations repeated over time with slight variation.24 Infrastructure as the instrumental vector field associates ecology as a powerful conceptual model for managing the
Infrastruktururbanismus
Technische Universität München, Institute for Urban Design, Urbanism and Landscape
city’s inherent complexity: a series of working concepts flexible enough to accommodate the wildly improbable demands of the contemporary city. This relation of a city as an ecological phenomenon surfaces a new form of late post modern urbanism: layered, non – hierarchical, flexible, time based and most importantly strategic.25 Thickening the Surface: the ground strategy The ground strategy of thickening the surface is a more scalar shift in the reconceptualization of infrastructure as the landscape catalyst. This strategy focuses more on the physical, geometrical and material product of the surface under action that generates a more fluid and interactive stage of new conditions for uncertain futures. Such a surface is articulated in two ways: as planar folds and smooth continuities and as a field that is grafted onto a set of new instruments and equipment.26 In either case, emerging a surface that becomes a staging ground for the unfolding of new events- towards a surface that is not merely the venue for formal experiments but the agent for evolving new forms of social life.
Image 11 – The thickened ground, Longgamg, GroundLab
Rebuilding, incorporating, crystallizing, connecting, intensifying, multiplying – these words describe not only the physical character of the thickened surface but also their programmatic associations. Such an active surface can variously clad, isolated and warped, inflated delineated and made material, perform roles that are simultaneously natural and social, testifying to the possibility of a vital public space, one that does not settle differences but rather allows them to exist.27 It invokes the functioning matrix of connective tissue that not only organizes objects and spaces but also the dynamic processes and events that move through them. The strategy to rework infrastructure as such surfaces not only targets towards the physical but also social and cultural transformations that function as social and ecological agents. The proliferation of infrastructure as such thickened surface provides the opportunity at the city level to generate a model that is capable of integrating differences into a coherent system; an unbounded series of landscapes rather than over coded, delimited places.28 West 8, at Schouwburgplein conceived such an active surface that not only solved technical infrastructural problems, such as drainage, structure and utilities, but also bought a greater performative effect to the square by multiplying its range of users. Similarly Foreign Office Architects, for the Yokohama Port terminal adopted a continuous, folded surface, as in a multilayered laminate wherein each floor ‘rolls’ into others. Sectional joining and definition varies as the program demands and thus consequently flows of people and goods combine in newly visible ways. Cutting, warping and the folding these surfaces created a kind of smooth geology – a topographical interface that joined interior and exterior spaces into one continuous surface. The expansion of inhabitation of subterranean networks in cities such as Montreal and Tokyo, and of aerial passageways in cities such as Atlanta and Minneapolis, effectively multiplies the number of public ground planes. The multilevel movement of people, together with the connector of elevators, moving stairs, ramps, and so on creates an extended active surface of the city.29This is the thickened surface continuous, multiple and dynamic – less design as passive as ameliorant and more as active accelerant, staging up new conditions for uncertain futures.
Image 12 – West 8, Schouwburgplein
Infrastruktururbanismus
Image 13 – Yokohama Port Terminal Technische Universität München, Institute for Urban Design, Urbanism and Landscape
`A closer look into current academia reveals a deeper understanding and research of the thickening the surface strategy. The approach taken in the academic projects are arguably more rigorous in nature, sometimes robust and intense. The projects examine a radical shift in methodology and provide tectonic solutions by exploring different scales and forms of infrastructure that make use of economies and ecologies through the enhancement and escalation of natural and social systems towards complex protocols. The ‘Quays as Keys’ 30 project ,Bruno De Milder focuses on readdressing the relation of the quays as an entity which disconnected the historical city and river relationship in Antwerp, Belgium. The proposal of the new relation of the quays was based on distinct ‘key typologies’ which became a tool to initiate public participation and facilitate the input of the authorities’ involved. The key typologies are selected according to strategic options, composing a strategic view and consequently indicating the location of the raised water barrier. Based on such parameters the keys are reshuffled to define a genetic code to the proposal, based on a system of principle and rules rather than a finished, immutable work. Thus, allowing infrastructure to organize a terrain which uses ‘territories’ and 'potential' instead of 'program', adaptable 'surfaces' instead of rigid 'structures' as a better way to articulate space”.31 The ‘RuRban Growth’, project Katya Larina, AALU 07-08, conceives a network of public spaces through infrastructural linkages. The technical sections of services such as waster water treatment, hot energy sinks, reed bed treatment etc are coupled and bought above the ground to create the thickened ground surface. These infrastructure systems are combined with tectonic movement possibilities which create dense, dynamic and crystallized urban spaces that form continuity within spatial elements in the city. The project re-examines infrastructure beyond technical considerations to embrace issues of ecological sustainability, connection to place and context and cultural relationships and further more combines with the ground surface to create a new topographical interface between architecture and landscape. Such kind of infrastructure tectonics allows for intense mixing in the fabric and generates spaces apart from the normative ones and allows for greater flow of material and social exchanges within the built fabric, towards the notion of network society.
Image 14 a_b – Material organization, infrastructure + social systems
On the other hand, the ‘Spaces in Between’ project, Wenwen Wang, AALU 08-09, conceives an urbanism with an interlocking and wrapping of infrastructure to negotiate between top down planning policies and bottom up emergence. The project explores the convention road infrastructure and uses a hierarchical relationship that is just not technically appropriated based on the width but also distributed at various levels to engage and produce different social expressions. The overlapping and juxtapositions of this road infrastructure in the city arranged new forms of public interaction and movement to produce interstitial spaces that could accommodate both certain and uncertain programs of the city. Infrastructure in such an expression of an urban/landscape surface as an interstice. The term interstice is used here as a social interstice as used by Marx, to define something above its mercantile and semantic values – “a moment in human relations which fits more or less harmoniously and openly into the overall system, but suggests other trading possibilities than those in effect within the system.” These projects discussed through the theoretical lens of thickening the surface operates infrastructure not to homogenize various levels of practice or to make connections between them under some transcendental supervision, but instead to engage them in processes of
Infrastruktururbanismus
Technische Universität München, Institute for Urban Design, Urbanism and Landscape
heterogenesis - a ‘process of continuous resingularization.’32 Heterogeneity is an expression of desire, of a becoming that is always in the process of adapting, transforming and modifying itself in relation to its environment. It is an active, immanent singularization of subjectivity, as opposes to transcendent, universalizing and reductionist homogenization. This transversal tool of heterogenesis probably best defines the reconstructed role of infrastructure, by means of which subjectivity is able to install itself simultaneously in the realms of environment, in the major social and institutional assemblages, and symmetrically in the landscapes and fantasies of the most intimate spheres of the individual.
Image 15 a_b – Material Organization – infrastructure as the thickened surface
Conclusion: The differential nestling space The re-examination of infrastructure from a mere ‘technically efficient’ object to an instrumental field of operation, with the urban realm is just not a recovery and recognition of the infrastructure system in itself, but a possible formulation of a larger lateral strategy that could counter the generic laws of urbanization which is reshaping the world through global forces – by exerting pressure on landscape and environment, and fragmenting society into various subcultures. Though this strategy is a response to globalization, it does not strive towards global homogeneity, but rather sets out antimonies between different levels of operation. In this regard, it would probably be suitable to term this ‘optimized instrument’ a local cultural resistance – which would tend towards the notion of Critical Regionalism of Kenneth Frampton. In Frampton’s words “A critical arriere-garde, has to remove itself from both the optimization of advanced technology and the ever-present tendency to regress into nostalgic historicism or the glibly decorative.”33 Though part of Frampton’s statement of removal from nostalgia is agreeable, the removal from advanced technology (globalization forces) is in itself a contradiction. Globalization is definitely not the tradition of any current society but ‘global’ is most definitely the culture that represents most societies in common. It is what consumes or rather reflects the new region. So, rather than negating culture and adopting a reductionist approach, the strategy would be to work by engaging with the very mechanisms of global capital for spinning a neo-avant gardist position. This ‘optimized instrument’ is then neither a local cultural resistance, nor a divergence but most specifically emergence brought about by the ‘expansion of alternative experiences centred around respect for singularity, and through the continuous production of an autonomizing subjectivity that can articulate itself appropriately in relation to the rest of the society.’34 What also surfaces from Frampton’s instrumentalization of local resistance is the unique role of landscape in providing a modicum of market based urban order. Frampton says, “I would submit that instead we need to conceive of a remedial landscape that is capable of playing a critical and compensatory role in relation to the ongoing, destructive commodification of the man made world.”35 The strategy of articulation of infrastructure - to reconstruct the whole and reclaim maximum possibility - thus takes on a new role that of the remedial landscape which invests in the ground itself as a material for design - acting as both a structuring element and a medium for rethinking urban conditions, to produce everyday human spaces that do not exclude nature. This remedial landscape i.e. infrastructure is seen as a means to resist homogenization of the environment while also heightening local attributes and collective sense of place.
Infrastruktururbanismus
Technische Universität München, Institute for Urban Design, Urbanism and Landscape
The strategies explored through the above projects arguably accounts for infrastructure, as this remedial landscape to support an inclusive concept of a programmed surface which acts as a differential space between the private and global and provides a basis for a design approach that can support dynamic and accelerant forces. This space is far from being a neutral container; it is a field in tension which, unlike most representations of urban space, explicitly includes natural processes. In social and ecological terms, the differential space suggests means of articulating the undefinable, through which unanticipated spatial characteristics may emerge from the interplay between elements and through inhabitation but more importantly staging up a framework to nestle multiscalar forces, often invisible at the site itself. Such nestling of scales can either be through engagement or through conflict and co operation of urban and the natural processes, to formulate an identity of a ‘becoming’ that occurs through the encounters between diverse social groups, economies, ecosystems and informational webs. Infrastructure as this differential space that support the negotiation of complimentary strategies of scale has the potential to recalibrate a territory in a way that can resonate with its surroundings and helps to frame such a territory in terms of processes of becoming, with the capacity to include multiple or perhaps contradictory traits. Infrastructure transforms as a spatial liability in a way that it catalyzes the coming together of relational identities – an urban condenser and works by engaging with the very mechanisms of global capital for spinning towards a neo-avant gardist position. Such a differential space , by re-examining and further reconceptualizing infrastructure as a remedial landscape, may be the new terms of withstanding the excess of popular culture – ‘restless mobility, consumption, density, waste, spectacle, and information – while absorbing and redirecting the alternating episodes of concentration and dispersal caused by the volatile movement of capital and power.’36 Notes: 1
Writh Louis, The American Journal of Sociology, Vol 44, No 1, pg 2, July 1938. http://www.socialfiction.org/psychogeography/unitary_urbanism.html,Chardronnet, Ewen, History of Unitary Urbanism and psychogeography at the turn of the sixties, lecture notes for a conference in Riga May 2003. 3 Berrizbeita, Anna and Pollack, Linda, inside outside: between architecture and landscape, pg 152, 1999, Rockport, Mass. 4 Lyle, John, Design for Ecosystem (1985) in Swaffield, Simon, ed., Theory in Landscape Architecture – A Reader, pg 178, 2002, University of Pennsylvania Press. 5 Poole, Kathy, “Civitas Oecologie: Civic Infrastructure in the Ecological City”, in Genovese Theresa, Eastley Linda, and Snyder, Deanna, ed.; pg 131, 1998, Harvard Architecture Review, Princeton Architectural Press. 6 Guattari, Felix, TheThree Ecologies translated by Pindar, Ian and Sutton, Paul, pg 23, 2008, Continuum. 7 Harvey, David, The Condition of Post Modernity, pg 69, 2008, Blackwell Publishing 8 Guattari, Felix, TheThree Ecologies translated by Pindar, Ian and Sutton, Paul, pg 34, 2008, Continuum. 9 Mossop, Elizabeth, Landscapes of Infrastructure, in Waldheim, Charles, ed., The Landscape Urbanism Reader, pg 168, 2006, Princeton Architectural Press. 10 Strang, Gary, Infrastructure as Landscape in Swaffield, Simon, ed., Theory in Landscape Architecture – A Reader, pg 224, 2002, University of Pennsylvania Press 11 Pollack, Linda, Constructed Ground: Questions of Scale, in Waldheim, Charles, ed., The Landscape Urbanism Reader, pg 129, 2006, Princeton Architectural Press. 12 Koolhaas, Rem, The New Sobriety, in, Lucan, Jacques, ed., Rem Koolhaas/OMA, pg 153, 1991, Princeton Architectural Press. 13 Guattari, Felix, and Deleuze,Felix,The Smooth and Striated Space, in A Thousand Plateaus-Capitalism and Schizophrenia,pg 480, 2004, Continuum International Publishing Group. 14 Doherty,Gareth, presentation Landscape as Urbanism 15 Najile, Ciro and Mostafavi, Mohesen, in Landscape Urbanism: a amanual for machinic landscape,pg 39, 2000,Architectural Association. 16 Doherty, Gareth, Landscape Catalysts, pg 2, Unpublished. 17 Doherty, Gareth, Landscape Catalysts, pg 3, Unpublished. 18 Koolhaas, Rem, Bigness: or the Problem of Large in Jencks, Charles and Kropf, Karl ed., Theories and Manifestos of Contemporary Architecture, pg 307-309, 1997, Academy Editions 19 Lindholm, Gunilla, Landscape Urbanism - large-scale architecture, ecological urban planning or a designerly research policy, pg 3, Department of Landscape Architecture, SLU, Alnarp, Sweden. 20 Gray, Christopher, From emergence to divergence – modes of Landscape Urbanism, pg 37, 2006, School of Architecture, Edinburgh College of Art. 21 Mossop, Elizabeth, Landscapes of Infrastructure, in Waldheim, Charles, ed., The Landscape Urbanism Reader, pg 172, 2006, Princeton Architectural Press. 22 Dr. Halkatti, C.S. Patil Water systems in ancient Vijayanagara, , Journal of Archaeology for Asia and the Pacific, June 2006 2
Infrastruktururbanismus
Technische Universität München, Institute for Urban Design, Urbanism and Landscape
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Allen, Stan, Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation, pg 174, 2009, Routledge. Allen, Stan, Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation, pg 175-76, 2009, Rouledge. 25 Waldheim, Charles, Landscape as Urbanism, in Waldheim, Charles ed.,The Landscape Urbanism Reader, pg 40,2006, New York: Princeton Architectural Press 26 Wall, Alex, Programming the Urban Surface, in Corner, James ed., Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture, pg 247, 1999, Princeton Architectural Press. 27 Pollack, Linda, Constructed Ground: Questions of Scale, in Waldheim, Charles, ed., The Landscape Urbanism Reader, pg 129, 2006, Princeton Architectural Press. 28 Foreign Office Architects , “Yokohama Port Terminal Competition,”AA Files 29, pg 17-21,1995, Architectural Association 29 Wall, Alex, Programming the Urban Surface, in Corner, James ed., Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture, pg 245, 1999, Princeton Architectural Press. 30 Refer, Water Urbanisms, ufo_1 urbanism fascicles OSA, pg 15, 2008, Sun 31 Corner, James, Terra Fluxus, in Waldheim, Charles, ed., The Landscape Urbanism Reader, pg 30, 2006, Princeton Architectural Press 32 Guattari, Felix, TheThree Ecologies translated by Pindar, Ian and Sutton, Paul, pg 59, 2008, Continuum 33 Frampton,Kenneth,Towards a Critical Regionalism :Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance, in Jencks, Charles and Kropf, Karl ed., Theories and Manifestos of Contemporary Architecture, pg 307-309, 1997, Academy Editions 34 Guattari, Felix, TheThree Ecologies translated by Pindar, Ian and Sutton, Paul, pg 39, 2008, Continuum. 35 Waldheim, Charles, Landscape as Urbanism, in Waldheim, Charles ed.,The Landscape Urbanism Reader, pg 40,2006, New York: Princeton Architectural Press 36 Wall, Alex, Programming the Urban Surface, in Corner, James ed., Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture, pg 247, 1999, Princeton Architectural Press. 24
Image Courtesy Image 1 - sites4usca.com/images/401by%20pearson.jpg Image 2 - www.ecosensual.net/drm/ideas/future1.html Image 3 - Najile, Ciro and Mostafavi, Mohesen, in Landscape Urbanism: a amanual for machinic landscape, 2000, Architectural Association. Image 4 – Tsouni, Eva, ‘Landscales’,MA Landscape Urbanism, 2004-2005, Architectural Association Image 5 - www.photographersdirect.com/buyers/stockphoto.asp?imageid=2496406 Image 6 – Bab Zaers, Integrated Design (InDe), www.inde-design .org Image 7 & 8 – Hampi, Integrated Design (Inde), www.inde-design .org Image 11 – Longgang Comeptiton Project, Groundlab, www.groundlab.org Image 12 - West 8, Schouwburgplein, www.west8.nl/projects/all/schouwburgplein Image 13 - www.flickr.com/photos/gravestmor/46780066/ Image 14 - Larina, Katya, ‘Rurban Growth’,MA Landscape Urbanism, 2007-2008, Architectural Association Image 15 - Wang, Wenwen ‘Spaces in Between’,MA Landscape Urbanism, 2008-2000, Architectural Association
Infrastruktururbanismus
Technische Universität München, Institute for Urban Design, Urbanism and Landscape