T H E L A N G UA G E O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
The infrastructural network of Japan’s highway system follows an entirely independent spatial logic than the cities over which it passes. Motivated by automotive access to dense urban conditions with severe spatial constraints, these layers of
highways produce an independent, constructed landscape. The Hakozaki Interchange of the Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway is a dense structural web of enormous scale, transforming the exterior spaces of the city into a cathedrallike interior.
its functionality, and its visibility. And like an orchestra, where each instrument contributes to the overall symphony, each network is also independent, serving a specific purpose and behaving in a specific way, yet together they operate to create the larger work. Infrastructural systems can be physical or ephemeral. As a physical network, they are intermediary devices between the requirements of the program for which they have been designed and the context in which they are located. A network of highways operates as an interface between the speed and turning radii of the automobile and the city or topography through which it passes. Alternatively, one may have an ephemeral network that is not physically constructed. For example, the Freedom Trail is a collection of buildings and sites where important events throughout Boston’s history have occurred. It is an historic armature that crosses time and space, marked by a simple red line inscribed on the sidewalks of Boston.
Physical Infrastructure introduces a systemic order, an identifiable armature to which other things can subsequently attach. At a larger scale, infrastructure often becomes the connective tissue that links fragments of existing programs, creating a larger and more visible network. A series of parks can establish an urban infrastructural network, with individual neighborhoods organizing themselves, both culturally and physically, around a specific park along the network. Alternatively, a system of repeating structural pylons that supports an overhead viaduct might become an organizing device that serves as points of reference for the neighborhoods nestled below. Systemic Armatures Like the grand structures of the Roman aqueducts, basic infrastructural amenities such as transportation, water, plumbing, electricity, and so on can operate as architectural armatures that spatially organize the complexes they serve. When visible, they become orienting devices that provide an underlying structure to the context within which they exist.
Weiss/Manfredi’s 2007 Seattle Art Museum: Olympic Sculpture Park blurs the boundaries between museum and city, building and landscape. Conceived as a continuous landscape linking the city’s sidewalks above to the waterfront esplanade below, the museum’s concept motivates all architectural and environmental decisions. At the urban scale, its undulating topography both houses the museum’s principal galleries and service spaces and creates
uninterrupted circulation through the complex site, spanning existing highway and rail infrastructures while providing site drainage and remediation systems. Within the building, the topography is reiterated at a smaller scale, as a sequence that cuts through and connects its galleries. Finally, its exterior surfaces provide outdoor amphitheaters and exhibition areas, expanding the museum’s cultural program into the city.