Infratecture, Infrastructure by Design

As a traffic engineer/architect Marc Verheijen brings his experience of working for the City of Rotterdam, with OMA and as Infrastructure Professor at Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, to this ‘worm’s eye’ view of infrastructure design. The book is introduced by a short history of infrastructure emphasising the enduring influence of street patterns, the sometimes powerful iconography of infrastructure form and the ability to redefine place with projects such as the Chanel Tunnel. Verheijen observes that infrastructure today is unfolding in a different context to that which made roads, canals and railways, being made instead in a networked, social world, in the wider flows of movement and culture.

The author sets out an ‘attitude’, an ‘infratecture’ polemic. To design infrastructure, we should understand these wider networks and links, and set new elements in their cultural and social context. We should understand infrastructure as a public space that belongs to everyone and consider the need to balance functionality and ambience. Importantly he gives emphasis to the role of infrastructure to communicate an instant ‘users-manual’, whilst creating spaces that are innovative and transcend functional norms.

The book is organised in 15 themes such as bridging, re-use, speedscapes, streets, etc., each illustrated by two case studies. There are some astute observations in the preamble to each pair of case studies that could be useful for someone developing briefs for infrastructure projects. For example, the idea of transit spaces being populated by walkers moving at two speeds. Case studies include ‘mobility cathedrals’ like Grand Central Station, and carved out semi-subterranean spaces like Les Halles, Paris or Hauptbahnhof, Berlin, spaces that are traversed by 1/10th of the city population every day. They also include roads designed as ecosystems, boulevards, station cycle parks and reused infrastructures. Much weight is given to written descriptions, when more images and scaled plans and sections could have helped to extend an understanding of the scale and spatial complexity of the cases and the spatial strategies that are discussed.

At times the book seems to lack critical reflection on the way that transit spaces can relentlessly exploit their mobile audiences targeting ‘run shopping’ by filling empty space with retail offer. It is the more various juxtapositions of function and use that are interesting. Early on the author notes that the Rijksmuseum has a room at Schiphol airport. His own design for a steel enamel-clad, curvilinear underpass is available over the year on a 4:2 ratio for wrapping with advertising or culture.

The author asserts that infrastructure should make travellers feel human, offer gateways to place and frame a mobile cinematic identity. Designers need to enjoy ‘the common and mundane aspect, the generic and general side of it’ as well as find the specific ‘couleur locale’, the mobility culture of places as a foundation for their design.