Infrastructure and the Future
PANEL ONE: CIVIC INFRASTRUCTURE In this initial conversation, the panel outlined the parameters of a ‘civic’ infrastructure in an effort to narrow the focus of the discussion to a set of goals for the future role of architects in the design and renovation of American infrastructure. The panelists generally agreed on the reality of current political inefficiencies and the need to take a serious look at the state of the profession, particularly with an eye toward political reform and a long term commitment to a holistic vision of civic environments. Goals for future practice included putting greater focus on regional and local space in America as the most effective places for infrastructural success and the reconceptualization of the architect as a steward of the public environment. Sarah Williams Goldhagan I wrote an article in the New Republic two or three years ago on infrastructure, which I presume is why you invited me. Since then, I’ve tried to read every article I could find that has the word ‘infrastructure’ in it, and have begun to despair because it’s such a big and amorphous and ill-defined term. When my article in the New Republic came out, the tagline that the editors came up with and put on the cover was “Making Infrastructure Sexy.” At that point, not very many people were thinking about infrastructure and I looked at it, and I thought “Oh, my God, I hope everybody knows I don’t have anything to do with these titles.” But since then, it’s become sexy. Harvard is having a lecture series this fall, MIT is having a lecture series this fall, here we have Northeastern, it goes on and on and on… I think one of the things that we can begin to do today with our enormously esteemed panelists on all three panels, is to begin to break the concept of infrastructure down into definable terms, because it’s too big to talk about just as infrastructure. The organization of these three panels—civic infrastructure, green infrastructure, and systems infrastructure—begins to do that. As I was thinking about this yesterday, I was increasingly relieved to think, well, you know, civic infrastructure is probably the easiest to understand.
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