Infrastructure Space is a collection of 25 essays inspired by the 5th LafargeHolcim Forum for Sustainable Construction on the theme of “Infrastructure Space” held in Detroit, USA in April 2016.
Is infrastructure but the plumbing and wiring of the human environment, or is it the true lifeblood of the spaces we inhabit? Infrastructural systems facilitate the flow of anything from people and goods to resources and information. While engineered to perform specific tasks, such networks also determine the structure of buildings, cities, and metropolitan regions, if not of entire nations and the planet itself.
Taking this critical leverage in consideration, this book calls for expanding and renegotiating the roles of infrastructure not only as a technical, but also as a political, economic, social, and even aesthetic matter of concern for all, claimed not only as the means for achieving more resilient forms of development, but moreover as a right to a sustainable way of life.
Twenty-five essays – by architects, engineers, urban theorists and policy-makers – address infrastructure as ‘thing’, ‘networked system’ and ‘agency’ respectively in three chapters, which are periodically interspersed by a visual atlas of examples, that playfully celebrate infrastructure through the lens of its spatial qualities.
Bibliographic details
Infrastructure Space
Ilka & Andreas Ruby (eds)
With a Visual Atlas by Something Fantastic.
Berlin, Ruby Press, 2017.
Binding/Format: English, 421 pages, 17.5 x 23.5 mm, hard cover, linen,
ISBN: 978-3-944074-18-4
Ordering instructions
Order directly from the publisher, Ruby Press, for EUR 48 per copy (excl. handling charges): ruby-press.com/shop/infrastructure-space/
Contents
- Infrastructure takes command
Marc Angélil & Cary Siress - Shades of gray and a green thumb with out-of-the-blue couplings
François Charbonnet & Cary Siress - Eight points on infrastructure and architecture
Laurent Stalder & Carlotta Darò - The metropolitan relational matrix
Jesse LeCavalier & Jason Young - The production of territory
Kathy Velikov & Geoffrey Thün - Planetary urbanization
Neil Brenner & Christian Schmid - Windowscape
Yoshihauru Tsukamoto
Infrastructure as thing
- Incremental infrastructure
Julia King - Occupation and in-between zones
Michael Dear - The ephemeral metropolis
Rahul Mehrotra & Felipe Vera - Mass and material architecture
Salmaan Craig - Biopolitics on the Nile
Charlotte Malterre-Barthes - Beyond the binary
Miho Mazereeuw & Claudia Bode - Land as project
Milica Topalović - Africa’s infrastructural appetite
Carlos Lopes
Infrastructure as network
- Territorial infrastructures
Kathy Velikov & Geoffrey Thün - Sound networks, the private, and the public sphere
Carlotta Darò - Energy transition at the regional scale
Sven Stremke - On scaleless urbanization
Ross Exo Adams - The urbanization of the ocean
Nancy Couling - The infrastructure of bare life
Tom Avermaete - Split Screen
Keller Easterling - The planet’s infrastructure
Simon Upton
Infrastructure as agency
- Infrastructures of equality versus inequality
Ricky Burdett - From railroad to greenway
Diane Van Buren - The mechanics of invisibility
Paul N Edwards - Transformative capacity of resilience
Henk Ovink - Designing the coast in the moment of rain
Anuradha Mathur & Dilip da Cunha - For a techno-aesthetic
Georges Teyssot
Appendices
- A visual atlas
Something Fantastic - Biographies
- Image credits
- Donor acknowledgement
- Colophon
