Introduction
Emerging practices in the field of landscape architecture have undergone a shift in their methods of engaging the site. This movement has begun to break through the qualities of the static master plan, altering and extending the relationship between the designer to the site, client and public. Infrastructure has established itself as the primary medium with which this shift has occurred. In a 2009 report by the American Society of Civil Engineers the nation’s infrastructures were concluded to be at a pivot point of failure, requiring more than $2 trillion to repair14. This call has intersected with the trends of a global financial crisis, allowing a new ground to be opened, where necessity demands that functionality overlap with emergent ecologies and robust social uses, promoting resiliency and longevity.
The Agency of Infrastructure
The works described here rarely fit into concrete categories; they are neither rural nor urban, either are they purely functional or formal, instead they postulate a constant state of hybridity and flux. They function through an anticipation of change rather than an antagonistic stance against it. Purposed toward an engagement of broader and increasingly complex ecological networks, diverse user groups, and processes, this body of work operates through the agency of infrastructure. This provides the opportunity for material to direct future development, rather than the traditional means of bureaucracy, liberating infrastructure to open up new possibilities of overlapping actions to be played over time.1 It also frees infrastructure of a banal visual aesthetic2, allowing the work to embrace the creative, which may perpetuate its longevity. The encapsulation this genre of work may be defined simply as a claim of precise and opportunistic staging3. Largely responding to an influx in public work projects4, these projects offers opportunities for greater degrees of resiliency5 and operation in the changing environment, where integration into systems of landscape ecology is more and more desired.
Infrastructure, however, is ambiguous at best in its relationship with landscape. Traditionally viewed as oppositional to systems that are more robust and self-perpetuating than itself, infrastructure is preferenced for its functionalism. One might look to distribution hubs, the interstate highway system or ports of entry for examples of this a cold rationalism. But there has been recent emphasis on expanding the influence of infrastructure in the fields of landscape architecture, architecture and engineering. This mode of practice has been articulated most clearly in three iterations, termed for these purposes as: “structural infrastructure”, “logistics infrastructure” and “ecological infrastructure”. Singularly they describe moments where infrastructure was retooled to meet the most pressing needs, collectively, however, a story unfolds where infrastructure itself becomes imbued with growing degrees of connection to what was previously outside of its sphere of influence.
Structural Infrastructure
Entering this discourse, Mohsen Mostafavi and Stan Allen have explored the abilities of infrastructure to hybridize itself with structure, serving functional roles along with roles of habitation, transportation, occupation and commerce. This line of thought has been expanded further to understand infrastructure not only as structure, but also as flows of material and service. Mostafavi makes reference to a genre of work, which “engages structures with a much wider set of programmatic and pragmatic concernts2”, citing the work of the Swiss engineer Jürg Conzett. Through his bridgework Conzett focuses our preconceptions of infrastructure in terms of its potential to incite a perception of the surrounding landscape2, utilizing the structure as a staging ground for expanded and strengthened experiences. Infrastructure here intertwines its functionality with broader cultural and technical understandings, permitting resiliency through its multifarious positions.
Logistics Infrastructure
The combined works of Pierre Belanger, Charles Waldheim and Alan Berger discuss this through the lens of the post-industrial era in which decentralized modes of production have radically changed distribution systems, thereby requiring new infrastructural systems. The impact of this on the landscape is responsible for both the formulation of new hubs of dispersion and collection as well as the retooling of antiquated sites. The vision casted by this genre defines infrastructure as the networks of “distribution and delivery, consumption and convenience, and accommodation and disposal6” rather than the structural definitions made previously.
Ecological Infrastructure
These new and possible connections are the starting point for the relationship between infrastructure and ecology. Often utilizing models of ecological descriptions are formulated on organizational patterns of engagement and growth. Those most often referenced are Richard Foreman’s diagrams and concepts of landscape ecology7 as well as Nina-Marie Lister’s formulation of adaptive ecological design5 and ecological resiliency5. Both Forman and Lister offer models of biotic matrices, webs, corridors and networks, these models have begun to be adapted to direct infrastructural and urban growth, notable extensions of what is traditionally thought of as infrastructure. The utility of these concepts in the realm of infrastructural form, function and deployment has begun to be articulated in part through the work of the architect Stan Allen. In allowing for a certain degree of flexibility Allen establishes an inexact organization of surfaces, movements, program, patch typologies and infrastructures. He models the aggregation of these five parts using concepts of landscape ecology: patches, corridors, and matrices, projecting their condition to be “architecturally specific yet programmatically indeterminate.1” The resulting project is clearly defined as it meets the requirements for the current usage, while remaining open to subsequent and future changes. It is clear, however, in Allen’s work that although ecological processes are used to direct portions of the project, he does not actively engage ecological processes for more robust ecological purposes.
The potential of infrastructure to overlap its function with often wild ecologies8 remains a ripe topic. This cooperation is argued for most readily in the context of opening up economic opportunities, and it is here Chris Reed makes his strongest arguments for a new form of hybridized infrastructure. Opportunism is key to these projects’ longevity, lying in contrast to that of the master plan, a reliance on coordination9 remains paramount. In terms of boundary the delimitation of the project becomes less relevant and in fact is counterproductive. Organizationally often spectrums of user and interest groups are integrated in the unfolding futures, providing redundancy in the engaged parties. The Silresim Superfund Redevelopment Study in 200310 describes explicitly the roles of the proposed infrastructures as remaining open for adaptation and unanticipated actions, providing resiliency for changing conditions. Giving form to this, networks of public and private groups were initiated to set in place temporary events while the physical re-imaging of the site was taking place. Concurrently integrating public recreation uses with construction infrastructures a remediative infrastructure was built, making visible the technology and involving the public in the creation of new spaces over time. Reed describes this technique of staging implementation as a capitalization on “minimal short-term interventions that yield significant long-term changes.”9 These build on flexibility by including staged events and tactical deployments in the first phases, establishing a cadre to spur the project forward. Reed calls for an understanding that “long term implementations may depend on short term initiatives,”11 and this plays out often in his work through precise interventions that unfold responsively promoting renewal and regeneration.
Tactical and Strategic Deployment
A survey of the relationships between these projects and their territorialisation indicates two relational modes, one that is hierarchical, spatially bound and highly controlled, and another that operates through opportunities afforded to it by coincidental or forecasted intersections. These operations have been explained through Michel de Certeau’s work as strategies and tactics12. He suggests the strategy indicates the territorialisation of a space over time, specifically in terms of allowing one to profit from acquisitions for the means of future territorial gain. This language lends itself to define projects that claim ground and are not so concerned with flows of material outside the site boundary. Through these means they create for themselves a steady state through control and rigid maintenance. Strategies do not stage, they seek to take over-they seek to conquer.
Certeau’s definition of tactic describes the operation as “a calculated action” made in the absence of a fixed location. Maintaining neither location nor boundary it is never autonomous; it must, as Certeau writes, “plan on and with a terrain imposed on it, organized by the law of a foreign power.”12 Certeau constructs the power relationship of the tactic as an art of pulling tricks, taking advantage of opportunities as they are afforded. He suggests the genre of tactics juxtapose diverse elements12 to suddenly shed new light, and while lacking place, they are limited by the possibilities of the moment. In other words “a tactic is determined by the absence of power just as a strategy is organized by the postulation of power.”12 Tactics are resilient, gaining validity in relation to their persistence through time and finding opportunities at exact and possible intersections. Tactical then may be the adjective to describe the nature of the action of staging.
A grounding of these suggested operations is necessary in preventing the kind of ambiguity that de-saturates designed interventions. Rather than reducing itself to be available to every type of habitation and use, these types of infrastructure should have the capacity to increase the odds for specific events to occur. Longevity, then, is a measure of the ability to negotiate multiple constituencies and in fact act as a tie between the various actors. Writing on the situational overlaps and alliances that often occur in spontaneous cities, Roger Sherman offers a clarification of the term multi-functionality noting, “Although clearly reminiscent of Venturi's double-functioning element, here multi-functionality does not refer to the distinction between its symbolic pragmatic roles, but rather that it possesses different diagrams of pragmatic operation, each which attracts a different audience.13” Infrastructure then has the opportunity to offer not numerous specified uses, but rather a careful ability to stage events that might steer its occupation in a particular way while remaining open to points of change or even instability.
Further Adaptations
Further exploration into the ability of infrastructure to navigate the functional capabilities it is constantly required to perform as well as the intimate connections to particular ecologies it often lacks, is warranted. The resiliency of this hybridity is just recently being sought after in lue of a constricting economy where public funds must be stretched for public projects. Expanding the term is necessary if public infrastructure is to remain viable. This expansion may be found by reading the combined works of Conzett, Allen and Reed, where psychological connections to the landscape are staged through a bridging of technical and aesthetic elements2. As Allen illustrates, the adoption ecological processes establishes new models for the structure itself, allowing for resilience in function and use1. And as Reed advocates a precise connection to landscape may be established through a mediation of ongoing ecological processes with infrastructural requirements10.
The act of staging is critical to these operations. The infrastructural stage, when designed through this lens, provides a ripe framework for spurring social, ecological and functional resiliency. These types of interventions prove to be most critical at intersections of infrastructural decay14, points where underfunding or changes in use have allowed infrastructure to no longer perform as it should, and areas of ecological concern.
Summary
The emerging shift in the field of landscape has begun to make momentum toward a new hybridization with infrastructural projects. The agency of infrastructure retains the possibility to be intertwined with overlapping operations, staged for resiliency as disturbances are encountered. Exploration of this has occurred in several stages, primarily through Conzett’s expansion of the functionality of infrastructure to become an aesthetic display, which acts as a mediator between the structure and the landscape. Stan Allen has successfully built upon this through an exploration of the utility of models of landscape ecology as an organizational schema. Reed, however, begins to integrate real processes of ecology within the infrastructural project, often through the operation of remediation infrastructure becomes an agent of this. These deployments when deployed successfully are done so in a tactical manner, one that is opportunistically resilient and thus long-lived. Continued development of this genre of work is crucial as infrastructure, becomes a critical mode of practice.
Notes
1. Many of these thoughts were expressed directly and indirectly in Stan Allen’s Logistical Activities Zone, Barcelona project (73).
Allen references Foreman’s identification of patches as “non-linear surface areas” and corridors as “infrastructural pathways containing movement, services, and function.” (73) Stan Allen. “Points + Lines”. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999.
2 Mostafavi adeptly gives reference to several architecture and engineering projects, which display an efficacy in establishing connections between technical, and design disciplines. Mohsen Mostafavi ed. “Structure as Space, Space as Structure.” Structure as Space. London: AA Publications, 2006. (8-9).
3. Staging here is defined at a root level by the Oxford Dictionary as, “a preparation of the conditions for the occurrence or beginning of something.” "Stage." The New Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd. ed. 2000.
4. Public works are defined here broadly through infrastructural projects that benefit a state’s larger economic base. Sanford Kwinter and Daniela Fabricius discussing the topic much more robustly in Mutations, “By infrastructure one refers to every aspect of the technology of rational administration that routinizes life, action and property with larger (ultimately global) organizations. Today, infrastructure can be argued to own a little part of everything.” Sanford Kwinter and Daniela Fabricius, “Urbanism: An Archivst’s Art?” in Rem Koolhaus, Stefano boeri, et al., eds., Mutations (Barcelona: Actar, 2001), 495-96.
5. The discussion around the utility of the ecological model for structural form and deployment might open up directions for infrastructural organization and program and structure to develop more robustly. Lister here defines the differences between ‘resiliency’ and ‘ecological resiliency’. Resiliency is first described as “…the ability of an ecosystem to withstand and absorb to some degree the effects of change, and following these change events, return to a recognizable steady state (or states).” (55) Viewing this from different direction she describes ecological resilience as “the measure of the amount of change or disruption that is required to move a system from one state to another, and thus, to a different state being maintained by a different set of functions and structures than the former.” (55) We might use this model to predict the types of change that will be likely to occur, and having catalogued this, we might design according to the prediction, rather than the traditional model, which seeks to mitigate the change all together.
Lister creates a comparison between designer ecology and ecological design. She first describes designer ecology as a “largely symbolic gesture provided by such parks’ designers to recall or represent nature in some capacity”. (36) Adaptive ecological design she describes as “the ability to recover from disturbance, to accommodate change, and to function in a state of health.”(36) Nina-Marie Lister. “Sustainable Large Parks: Ecological Design or Designer Ecology?” Large Parks. Ed. Julia Czerniak and George Hargreaves. New York: Princeton Architectural Press: 2007.
6. Charles Waldheim and Alan Berger. “Logistics Landscape.” Landscape Journal. Vol. 27, no. 2. 2008. pp. 224-237.
7. It is through Richard Forman’s formulations of the dynamics of landscape ecology that many designers have utilized as a jumping board for understanding complex urban issues. Models of corridors, patch dynamics and mosaics have severely altered the culture’s use of landscape ecology for architectural purposes. Richard T.T. Forman. “Landscape Mosaics.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
8. Kwinter offers a full discussion of the wildness of “packs, flocks, swarms, storms, quakes, abundance and extinctions”. He concludes “extremely intricate systems can most effectively be built up messily, in steps and layers, from approximate rather than finished and perfect parts, and incrementally over time, rather than in one fell swoop of assembly. Indirectness, it appears, is actually the secret to achieving a robust, adaptive, flexible, and evolving design… They are wild systems that range and explore and mine their environment, that capitalize on accidental successes, store them, and build upon them.” (187) Sanford Kwinter. “Wildness: Prolegomena to a New Urbanism).” Far from Equilibrium: Essays on Technology and Design Culture. Barcelona: Actar. 2008. pp. 186-193.
9. Chris Reed. “Performance Practices.” 306090 Architecture Journal. Aug. 2005: 83-91.
10. Chris Reed. “StossLU.” Seoul: C3 Publishing. 2007. pp. 157-167, 185-195.
12. Michel de Certeau. “The Practice of Everyday Life.” Berkeley: University of California Press. 1984. pp. 29-42.
13. Roger Sherman. “Counting (on) Change.” The Infrastructural City. Karzys Vernalis ed.. Actar: Barcelona: 2008.
14. One need only to survey the American Society of Civil Engineers 2009 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure where a cumulative grade of “D” is given. This reports analyses: aviation(D), bridges(C), damns(D), drinking water(D-), energy(D+), hazardous waste(D), inland waterways(D), levees(D-), public parks and recreation(C-), rail(C-), roads(D-), schools(D), transit(D) and wastewater(D-). The estimated repair cost for this is $US 2.2 Trillion.
The report card also offers key solutions for raising the nation’s rating:
-Increasing federal leadership in infrastructure
-Promoting sustainability and resilience
-Developing federal, state and regional infrastructure plans
-Addressing life-cycle coasts and ongoing maintenance
-Increasing and improving infrastructure investment from all stakeholders
“Report Card for America’s Infrastructure.” The American Society of Civil Engineers. 209. 27 Oct. 2009 .
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