Architecture Teaching Fellow Katrina Stoll launched a book “Infrastructure as Architecture” in Venice, Italy on August 28, 2010.
Infrastructure has played a key role in dramatically reformatting the built fabric and spatial reserves within the past one hundred years, and will continue to do so in the future. The involvement of architects is necessary to shape the development of infrastructural design. Infrastructure as Architecture contains a selection of influential architects and writers who have critically evaluated the coupling of these fields through essays and projects. The book is structured by five organizing themes that frame the diverse approaches to the subject, namely: Infrastructure Economy, Infrastructure Ecology, Infrastructure Culture, Infrastructure Politics, and Infrastructure Space/Networks.
Contributors of this book include:
Stan Allen, Bureau E.A.S.T., Mark Campbell & Deane Simpson, Stefano Casciani, Dana Cuff, Alexander D’Hooghe, Keller Easterling, Lateral Office, Jesse LeCavalier, MVRDV, Stephen Read & Patrizia Sulis, Simon Sellars, Kelly Shannon, Cary Siress, Jonathan D Solomon, Katrina Stoll & Scott Lloyd, Georgeen Theodore, Geoffrey Thün & Kathy Velikov, UrbanLab, and Urban Think Tank.
For more information on the book visit: http://infrastructureasarchitecture.com/
Stoll also had her project IP2100 featured in the Australian pavilion at the Venice biennial.
Island Proposition 2100
The Island Proposition 2100 (IP2100) proposes an infrastructural spine as an instrument that will interconnect Australia, creating regional exchange and fostering responsible sustainability. The IP2100 spine contains a looped system of hybrid infrastructures, initiating a new symbiotic relationship between the urban centres and their supporting territories. An extensive network on the multi-regional scale provides cites with the resources to become robust and responsive to future challenges.
The connectivity of the globe has been achieved, both physically and intangibly, through new linkages that strengthen communications; this has effects on politics, economics, and culture. Once connected with the mainland, Tasmania, no longer isolated from the rest of the country, will become aligned with broader Australian and international agendas. As a result, the scale of urban territories will continue to be reframed as new connections are formed. Cities become “spatial peaks within stretching regional fields.”[1] Distributed between Melbourne and Hobart, the spine will form new urban types by carrying the flows of exchange, allocating stocks, converting ‘waste’ to resources, and providing living, industrial, and commercial spaces along the network. A balanced system of exchange of population, information, material, and capital flows will maintain a steady stream along the spine. The so-called ‘food bowl’ of the country will supply food products, energy, and water, becoming valuable stocks that will solve the predicted shortages on the mainland.
The spine will transport people and goods with an initial implementation of magnetic levitation (maglev) technology, significantly reducing the time and pollution of current travel methods. Centres along the spine will function as hubs for a larger network of sub-stations that feed into the spine and increase the accessibility to other parts of the island. Both trains and individual transit vehicles will run along this high-speed inter-continental transport network. The linear axis will work towards minimising sprawl and concentrating growth along its route. Urban clusters along the spine will assist in maintaining the island’s natural spatial reserves, producing a densified urban condition.
In addition to functioning as a means of transporting stocks and flows, the spine will be an efficient hybrid infrastructural model by harvesting energy on site via solar, wind, and tidal mechanisms, cleaning grey water with constructed wetlands along the length of the track, and acting as a rainwater catchment. These services will plug into the loop, sending outputs to urban centres and receiving inputs in the form of nutrients from compostable waste and grey water that will return to the midlands agricultural region to complete the cycle. A living system will be inserted into a larger network, paving the way for future linkages on a macro scale.
The future of Australia’s strength and resiliency lies in the connectivity of the continent as accomplished through the development of a closed-loop infrastructural system. The IP2100 will be the first move towards this goal.
[1] Ronald Wall “Global/Local” in The Regionmaker: Rhein Ruhr City, edited by MVRDV, Ostfilder-Ruit, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2002, p. 29