Infrastructural Incitation
* photo by Robert Sumrell
The Infrastructural City is causing something of a stir after being featured in the Los Angeles Times last Sunday. Taking it as a point of departure for his latest article, the paper’s prominent architecture critic, Christopher Hawthorne, noted the book’s timeliness (“[arriving] on shelves brimming with so much political and cultural currency”) in the context of the growing concerns over the state of infrastructure in the United States, present and future, particularly in terms of the stimulus proposals that will concentrate government efforts against economic fallout:
In recent weeks, as the details of the stimulus package were being hammered out in Congress, the same few questions moved near the top of the political agenda not just in Washington but in cities around the country: In 2009, what is infrastructure, exactly? Is it just roads, bridges, train lines and tunnels — the muscle and bone of the city — or can we update that New Deal-era definition to include a greener, more flexible or even purely digital set of urban initiatives? If so, how best to integrate that new, “soft” infrastructure with the hard variety?
Mr. Hawthorne briefly praises the book for staying away from the usual readings of L.A. as an abstract urban narrative, offering “a doggedly detailed guide to Los Angeles as a physical thing” instead. Soon enough, though, he switches to what really concerns him: the relationship between architecture and infrastructure. Rather than providing a standard review, the piece takes the book as a springboard for discussion. The critic’s main concern is pretty clear: will infrastructure save architecture from itself?
Infrastructure captured the public imagination” in the 1930s and ’40s, Varnelis writes. “Americans came to accept modernism through bridges and dams before they accepted it in buildings.” It’s tempting to imagine the same process unfolding again…What if we asked our most innovative architects to collaborate on plans to build bus stops, subway stations, neo-Victory Gardens and elementary schools?…Maybe there’s room in this new political climate for a productive hybrid from teams of talented architects and engineers: The conspicuously and efficiently designed but anonymous piece of the city, the infrastructural masterpiece that carries no signature.
*photo by Kazys Varnelis
Kazys, unsurprisingly, is less optimistic. In a somewhat biting reply to Mr. Hawthorne’s piece posted on his blog the same day it hit the stands, the editor of The Infrastructural City draws a thick line between the critic’s concerns and his own. Dreading the thought of hyperstylized energy farms or subway stations or things of this sort, Varnelis stands by the premises of the book: “Infrastructure continued to rise in the public eye, in large part because, as our book points out, it is in a state of constant failure.” He even ventures the thought that the U.S. might be better off without a major infrastructural rehaul (especially one ushered by architects), considering the possibility of it leading to the next bubble n’ burst economic cycle. Kazys doesn’t want to see architecture saved, but significantly redefined; and he certainly doesn’t see infrastructure as the saving grace. As John Southern keenly points out in his own review on Tropolism, infrastructure itself, as a concept and as a built reality, is going through a series of crises of its own.
In any case, the debate is on—it’s actually just starting to get good. While the terms of the controversy and (and of the possible solutions) are still shaping themselves, the only certainty is that the issue of infrastructure will remain crucial, one way or the other.
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Check this other review of the book at Archidose (John Hill marks it as *a favorite*)
