Allen, Stan. (1999). Infrastructural Urbanism.

Points + Lines: Diagrams and Projects for the Cit

Infrastructura l Urbanism
Stan Allen

Andrea Doria aground

Aircraft Carrier USS Lexington of( Nantucket. 195&

I start with a sequence of three images spanning six decades of the SEea N D I MAG E: the liner Andrea Doria foundering off the coast of

twentieth century: Nantucket in 1956 (taken over twenty years after the first image,
still closer in time to the heady world of prewar modernism than to
FI RS 1 I MAG E: the bow of an aircraft carrier, shot from below. The our cynical end-of-century Recalling the iconic
bulk of the craft looms over an invisible horizon, a blank open- status of the liner in the theories of modern architecture, this
mouthed face stares back at the viewer. Published in 1935, in a col- image could be emblematic of the foundering of the modernist
lection edited by Le Corbusier, the caption reads: 'Neptune rises project in the postwar era. By 1956, under the shadow of the Cold
from the sea, crowned with strange garlands, the weapons of War, the modernist dream of an integration of technology and aes-
Mars.,,1 This photograph of the American aircraft carrier USS Lex- thetics was no longer believable. The social and technical forces of
ington stands for a moment in which the technical and the aes- modernity were about to become detached from the production of
thetic formed a unified whole. It presents the instrumentality of images, both in popular and high culture.
advanced engineering design and the organization of the forces of
production that made construction at this scale possible- THIRD IMAGE: 8-24 bomberfactory in Fort Worth, Texas. This aerial
processes inescapably linked to the war machine-as fully inte- view of the factory floor documents the implementation of the
grated into a meaningful cultural and aesthetic framework, even to modernist dream of rational production under the pressures of the
the point of establishing continuity with classical mythology. wartime economy : the precise calibration of material, bodies, and
time that allowed such incredibly efficient production-"on the
front line, and on the production line," as the promotional copy

In(rutrudural
 8-24 80mber Fattory. Fort Wortn,
Texas. 1944

says. 'One 8-24 Bomber every four hours": a mechanical ballet per- neutral technical frame. These images mark a shift from models of
formed in this limpid space of production. The space is the exact formal 0 rga nization and mean ing that work with tra nspa rency and
counterpart to the rational machines produced within it, organized depth, to a condition of shallow surfaces, in which meaning resides
by the inti nite perspective of a perfect panoptic transparency, shel- in graphic information lying on the surface.
49
tered by the rationa I tectonics of the factory structu re itself. How- But is it not equally plausible to conceive of this shift not
ever, it is important to note that this image appears not in its as modernism'S failure, but as a paradoxical success? Modernity
original 1940s context, but in the early 1990s, illustrating an tended toward abstract systems of exchange and serial production.
advertisement to ra ise money for the reconstruction of a single The passage from concrete, material things to ephemeral signs-the
8-24 bomber for exhibition purposes. As such, it marks a shift from dissolution of objects into flows of information-was in many ways
technologies of production to technologies of reproduction and already anticipated by the abstract logics of modernity itself. How-
display. If the factory floor is the ideal space of early modernism, ever, the particular form that this transformation takes is not
then the museum is the emblematic space postmodernity. anticipated. nor can it ever be fully controlled from within mod-
It is this perceived failure of the modernist project that serves ern ism. Scm e reassessment is requ ired.
to legitimate the subsequent turn toward a postmodern culture of Postmodernism in architecture is usually associated with a
abstract signs and surfaces without depth. In architecture, the con- rediscovery of architecture's past. However, an equally important
sequence of the shift from technologies of production to technolo- shift preceded and in many ways underwrote the postmodern turn
2
gies of reproduction was given expression as an architecture that to history at the end of the sixties. Postmodernism responded not
produced meaning by the grafting of conventional signs onto a only to a call to re-inscribe architecture into history, it also

Inrras.tructu ra I Urba nl s.m

 responded to a contemporary demand for meaning in architec-
ture. History provided a ready-made catalog of "meaningful"
forms, but in order for the past to be appropriated and utilized, it
had to be detached from its original context and converted into a
sign. More than historical reference, it is the presence of this
semiotic/structuralist model that identifies postmodernism in
architecture. But once architecture's signifying capacity had been I ntercoa,ta I Wat.rway, ForI
Lauderda Ie. Flori da, 1956-57
opened up, no limit could be placed on signified content. "His-
tory" is but one of the many things that a semiotic architecture given up on the possibility of ever intervening in that reality. Under
can signify. the dominance of the representational model, architecture has sur-
This turn toward a semiotic architecture at the end of the six- rendered its capacity to imagine, to propose, or to construct alter-
ties and the beginning of the seventies has itself been subject to native realities. As Robin Evans has remarked, a building was once
50
intense critical scrutiny-from both a formal and an ideological "an opportunity to improve the human condition;" now it is con-
point of view. But even the most radical critiques have left the fun- ceived as "an opportunity to express the human condition.") Archi-
damental assumption that architecture behaves like a discursive tecture is understood as a discursive system that expresses,
system intact. Deconstruction's radical claim to contest the very critiques, or makes apparent the hard realities of a world that is
possibility of meaning in architecture, for example, was a claim held safely at arm's length.
carried out over the territory of meaning and representation, and One effect of this shift toward images and signs is that archi-
pays little attention to architecture's instrumentality, or to the tecture's disciplinary frame shifts. It finds itself in competition with
complex traffic between representation and materiality. Meaning other discursive media-painting, film, literature, the Internet, per-
today may be multiple, contested, contaminated, and partial, but formance art-a field in which architecture often seems to come up
meaning is still the issue. short. What these other media lack, of course, is architecture's
Nevertheless, an architecture that works exclusively in the powerful instrumentality-its capacity not only to critique, but also
semiotic register and defines its role as critique, commentary, or to actually transform reality. Architecture's relationship to its
even "interrogation" (laying bare of the intricacies of architecture's material is, however, indirect. Unlike activities such as gardening or
complicity with power and politics) has, in some fundamental way, woodworking, where something concrete is made by direct contact
 with the material, the architect (like the engineer, the urbanist, or
the ecologist) operates on reality at a distance, and through the
mediation of abstract systems such as notation, projection, or cal-
culation. Indirect contact is the necessary counterpart to the larger
scale of intervention. Architecture works simultaneously with
abstract images and with material realities, in complex interplay. It
is a material practice .
JJ1 sc:«ii!:!

RIGHT : Richard T. T. ................... It is not entirely coincidental that the twenty-five year period
FOrfman.
....
coinciding with the rise of post modernism in architecture has seen
A lou'
ecology
a massive defunding of urban infrastructure. In the United States,
B[tOW: Watauga Dam public investment in civic works- highways, railroads, water supply
8 feta l
(Tennes'" Valley
Authority), proposed
and control, land reclamation, mass transit-is at an all time low.
location, 1946 While architects cannot logically be held accountable for these
B
Olsunoe
complex political and economical shifts, it might be argued that by
the production of a theoretical framework to justify an architecture
of surface and sign, architects have, consciously or not, partici-
pated in their own marginalization. If arch itects assert that signs
and information are more important than infrastructure, why
would bureaucrats or politicians disagree? As much as they have
been excluded from the development of the city, architects them-
selves have retreated from questions of function, implementation,
technique, finance, and material practice. And while architects are
relatively powerless to provoke the changes necessary to generate
renewed investment in infrastructure, they con begin to redirect
their own imaginative and technical efforts toward the questions
of infrastructure. A toolbox of new and existing procedures can be

Inf'rastructunl Urbanism
expanded by reference to architecture's traditional alliance with to the production of autonomous objects, but rather to the produc-
territoria I organ ization and functional ity. tion of directed fields irl which program, event, and activity can
This is the context within which I want to situate the shift in play themselves out.
recent practice toward infrastructure. Going beyond stylistic or for- In an interview conducted fifteen years ago, Michel Foucault
ma I issues, i nfrastructura I urban ism offers a new model for prac- noted that "Architects are not the engineers or technicians of the
tice and a renewed sense of architecture's potential to structure three great variables: territory, communication and speed."s While
the future of the city. Infrastructural urbanism understands archi- it is hard to argue Foucault's point as an assessment of the current
tecture as material practice-as an activity that works in and condition, it deserves to be pointed out that historically this has
among the world of things, and not exclusively with meaning and not been the ca'ie. Land sUiveying, territorial organization, local
image. It is an architecture dedicated to concrete proposals and ecologies, road construction, shipbuilding, hydraulics, fortificatiorl,
realistic strategies of implementation and not distanced commen- bridge building, war machines, 3rld rletworks of communication
tary or critique. It is a way of working at the large scale that and transportation were all part of the traditional competence of
escapes suspect notions of master planning and the heroic ego of the architect before the rise of disciplinary specialization. Territory,
the individual architect. Infrastructural urbanism marks a return to communication, arld speed are properly infrastructural problems,
instrumentality and a move away from the representational imper- and architecture as a discipline has developed specific technical
ative in architecture. means to deal effectively with these variables. Mapping, projection,
This does not imply a simple return to the now discredited calculation, notation, and visualization are among architecture's
certainties of modernism. Two claims can be made: first, that archi- traditional tools for operating at the very large scale. These proce-
tecture'S instrumentality can be reconceived-not as a mark of dures can be reclaimed for architecture, and supplemented with
modernity's demand for efficient implementation but as the site of new technologies of design and simulatiorl rlOW available.
architecture's contact with the complexity of the real. By immers- But rethinking infrastructure is orlly Orle aspect of a larger
ing architecture in the world of things, it becomes possible to pro- move away from the represerltatiorlal model, one of the many
d uce wha t Robi nEva ns, pa raph rasing Lyotard, has referred to as a implications of architecture urlderstood as a material practice.
"volatile, unordered, unpoliceable communication that will always Material practices (ecology or engineering for example) are con-
4
outwit the judicial domination of language: The second claim is cerned with the behavior of large scale aS'iemblages over time.
for a practice engaged in time and process-a practice not devoted They do not work primarily with images or meaning, or even with

Infrutfuctunl Urbanism
 objects. but with performance: energy inputs and outputs. the cali-
bration of force and resistance. They are less concerned with what
things look like and more concerned with what they can do.
Although these material practices work instrumentally. they are
not limited to the direct manipulation of given material. Instead
they project transformations of reality by means of abstract tech-
niques such as notation, simu lation, or calculation. Material prac-
tices organize and transform aggregates of labor, materials, energy
and resources, but they work through necessarily mediated proce-
dures-operations of drawi ng and prOjection, for examp le-that
leave their trace on the work. Material practices deploy an open
catalog of techn iques without preconceived forma l ends.
53
In architecture and urbanism, techn ique does not belong to an
individual but to the discipline as a whole. As Foucault has
reminded us, techniques are social before they are technical.
Hence, to think of architecture as a material practice does not
mean leaving questions of meaning entirely behind. Architecture
works with cultural and social variables as well as with physical
materials, and architecture's capacity to signify is one tool avail-
able to the architect working in the city. But material practices do
not attempt to control Of predetermine meaning. Instead, they go
Computor flow diogram beyond the paradoxes of the linguistic to examine the effects of
Signifying pract ices on performance and behavior. Material prac-
tices are not about expression-expressing either the point of view
of an author or of the collective wi ll of a society: rather they con-
6
dense, transform , and materialize concepts.

In(ras.tlue:tur.:d Urbanis.m
 • ',I

Architecture is uniquely capable of structuring the city in

ways not available to practices such as literature, film, politics,
installation art, or advertising. Yet because of its capacity to actu-
al ize social and cultural concepts, it can also contribute something
that strictly technica l disciplines such as engineering cannot. When
Wal ter Benjamin writes that 'constructio n fUlfills the role of the
unconscious: he articulates the capacity of certain st ructures to
act as a scaffold for a complex series of events not anticipated by
RIGHT : Richard T. T. Foreman , landscape the architect-meanings and affects existing outside of the control
ecology diagrams
of a single author that continuously evolve over time.
oH OW : Ca rqui noz Bridge Approach,
Crockett, Cal i forn ia. 195B

54
SEVEN PROPOSITIONS

In retrospect, I really think that we are now dealing with the

same issues again. after the nightmare."
REM KOOlHAAS, 1991

1. Infrastructure works not SO much to propose specific buildings

on give n sites, but to construct the site itself. Infrastructure pre-
pares the ground for future building and creates the conditions
for future events. Its primary modes of operation are: the division,
allocation; and construction of surfaces; the provision of services
to support future programs; and the establishment of networks
for movement, communication , and exchange. Infrastructure's
medium is geography.

Infr u
. tructur.al Urb.i!lnism
2. Infrastructures are flexible and anticipatory. They work with time accommodate existing conditions while maintaining functional
and are open to change. By specifying what must be fixed and what continuity. Nevertheless. infrastructure's default condition is regu-
is subject to change. they can be precise and indeterminate at the larity-in the desert, the highway runs straight. Infrastructures are
same time. They work through management and cultivation. above all pragmatic. Because it operates instrumentally, infrastruc-
changing slowly to adjust to shifting conditions. They do not tural design is indifferent to formal debates. Invested neither in
progress toward a predetermined state (as with master planning (ideal) regularity nor in (disjunctive) irregularity. the designer is free
strategies). but are always evolving within a loose envelope of to employ whatever works given any particular condition.
constraints.
5. Although static in and of themselves, infrastructures organize
3. Infrastructural work recognizes the collective nature of the city and manage complex systems of flow. movement. and exchange.
and allows for the participation of multiple authors. Infrastructures Not only do they provide a network of pathways, they also work
give direction to future work in the city not by the establishment of through systems of locks, gates, and valves-a series of checks that
55
rules or codes (top-down). but by fixing points of service, access, control and regulate flow. It is therefore a mistake to think that
and structure (bottom-up). Infrastructure creates a directed field infrastructures can in a utopian way enable new freedoms, that
where different architects and designers can contribute. but it sets there is a possibility of a net gain through new networks. What
technical and instrumental limits to their work. Infrastructure itself seems crucial is the degree of play designed into the system, slots
works strategically. but it encourages tactical improvisation. Infra- left unoccupied. space left free for unantiCipated development. This
structural work moves away from self referentiality and individual also opens the question of the formal description of infrastructural
expression toward collective enunciation. systems: infrastructures tend to be hierarchical and tree-like. How-
ever. there are effects of scale (a capillary effect when the elements
4. Infrastructures accommodate local contingency while maintain- get very numerous and very small) and effects of synergy (when
ing overall continuity. In the design of highways. bridges, canals, or systems overlap and interchange), both of which tend to produce
aqueducts. for example. an extensive catalog of strategies exist to field conditions that disrupt the overall tendency of infrastructural
accommodate irregularities in the terrain (doglegs, viaducts, systems to organize themselves in linear fashion.
cloverleaves, switchbacks, etc.). which are creatively employed to

In{uslruClUUlI Urbanis.m
Lou;. Kahn: movement diagrams. Phi lade lph ia Plann ing Study.

In(UHructufal UrbaJlism
 6. Infrastructural systems work like artificial ecologies. They man- NOTES:
1. Le Corbusier. Airclllft (1935; rtprint New York: Books, 1988). illustration
age the flows of energy and resources on a site, and they direct the
18.
density and distribution of a habitat. They create the conditions 2. Robert Venturi. Complexity and Contradiction in (New York : The
Museum of Modern Art. 196&), Colin Rowe and Koetter, Collage City (Cam-
necessary to respond to incremental adjustments in resource avail-
bridge. MA: MIT Pms. 1978). Note the text to City was compkted in
ability, and modify the status of inhabitation in response to chang- 1973 and widely circulaled before the publittltion of the book.
3. 'Words like investigation, enquiry and interrogation, used much in describing what
ing environmental conditions.
designers do. suggest that d..ignlng is a way of finding out, as if the process of
de<>ign were conducted in SOme kind of menla"aboratory in which the boundaria
of knowtedge w"e being pushed slowly but surely forward ." Robin Evans. "Bad
7. Infrastructures allow detailed design of typical elements or
News." paper delivered at th on Theory and Practice in the Work of John
repetitive structures, facilitating an architectural approach to Hediuk. Canadian Centre of Architecture. Montreal. 15 May' 992.
4. Robin Evans. The Projective Cast (Cambridge. MA: MtT 1995).91-2.
urbanism. Instead of moving always down in scale from the general
5. Michel Foucault. "Space. Knowledge, and Power." in The Foucautt Reade'. ed. Paul
to the specific, infrastructural design begins with the precise Rabinow (New York' Pantheon Books. 1984), 244.
6. In the terms of the distinction proposed by Gilles Oeleuz •. materiat practices are
delineation of specific architectural elements within specific limits.
more with the actualization of the virtual than with the realization of 57
Unlike other models (planning codes or typological norms for the pO<Slblc. See Gill ... De leuze, Bergsonjsm. trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Bartlara
Habb.,jam (New York: Zone Books. 19891. 97 On the subject of vinuality. and on a
example) that tend to schematize and regulate architectural form
number of other points. I have referml to Michael Speaks. "Redirecting the Global
and work by prohibition, the limits to architectural design in infra- of Flows: paper give" at the Berlage Institute, Amsterdam. 28 October 1997.
7. Alison Smithson. ed .. Team 10 Primer (Cambridge, MA: MIT 1968).73. While
structural complexes are technical and instrumental. In infrastruc-
an entire se<:tion of the Pr,mer is devoted to "Urban Infrastructurt," the primary
tural urbanism, form matters, but more for what it can do than for subject is the problem of large-scate motorws\'S. Nevenheless,leam 10', a"entia"
to questions of scale, usc. movement and flow, and the evolution of the urban land -
what it looks like.
scape ovn time make their thoughts an exemplaty and obli9atory starting point in
any discussion of architecture and infrastructure.

'The time has come to approach architecture urbanistically and

urbanism architecturally,,7

Infruh'ue'lJrel Utbani5m