Panel 2: Systems Infrastructure
Clare Lyster In actual fact, the delivery of a lot of those eighteenth and nineteenth century systems has been known about for quite a long time, so it might be 42
interesting to think about the new systems of the city—the ones that have an unclear system of delivery and impact. It may also be interesting to use the ambiguity of this category as a way to think about new systems, their delivery, and how they make space in the world—or how they change how architects make space in the city. A lot of contemporary systems are not very tangible. How do we interface with these new contemporary networks? How do we represent them? How do we draw them? How do we deliver them? And how do we then take their intelligence and use that intelligence to reimagine the city? Jason Schreiber Some of those systems are completely unseen, and that may be good; and some of those systems are overwhelmingly seen and take up too much space. As we look at sustainability and as we look to the future, if we don’t make people more aware of how we use energy or transit or water by bringing them into the public eye, we keep investing in coal power and roads. Will Lark When you turned on the water or flipped the switch, you had no direct feedback about how much energy that was consuming or where it came from. Some of the projects we look at are trying to bring to life some of those ideas— just a little bit of that feedback, but in real time so the end user can then decide how she or he is going to behave. If we can tap into the communication systems or other intelligence systems to let people know how their behavior is actually affecting things, we can have more influence. Bringing all those different bits of information together and illustrating them in a way that people can understand can help change some behaviors. Tom Keane The criticism of me was that I was just oblivious. I very much enjoy being able to get clean water, transportation, electricity. But the problem was that everything I was getting was simply not sustainable. It actually goes back to a point that Clare made, which was that at least three of those things—the power, and the