E X P LOR IN G TH E P O T E NT I AL O F M O BI L I T Y IN FR A S TR U C TU RE T HRO UG H URBAN DE S I G N
ABSTRACT This research explores the requalification of productive space by testing new potentials for infrastructure. Our examination of mobility infrastructure in particular is inextricable from the issue of urban development and its implications for socioeconomic growth. Our research concerns the appropriateness of the increasing infrastructural investments made in megacities. We intend to test ways of revealing infrastructure’s scope with regards to manufacturing, residential, and civic space. Our test case is Bangkok, a megacity perpetually in flux and hyperphysical in its climate. It is commercialized to a degree that is extreme even by comparison with other megacities. Its fabric offers unique features, many of which are now imperiled by contemporary urban transformations such as monofunctional developments. Nowhere is the threat to its dynamism starker than in the case of the Port Authority (Klong Toey) property, a desirable strip of land bypassed by infrastructural expansion plans and currently slated for redevelopment. But it is also home to Bangkok’s largest slums and concentration of industry. In our interventions, we propose different ways of retaining these features that enhance the area’s complex productive relationship with the rest of the city. We will focus on the adaptation of Bangkok’s underserved yet vital industries to their particular urban environments. Using key design tools, our five individual projects address the difficulty of merging new urban fabric with these older industries by exploiting existing infrastructure. Each intervention relies one of two methodologies. The first is a systematic approach that considers relations within the industries; the second is contextual and attempts to elaborate on existing morphologies.