Towards a new infrastructure: aesthetic thinking, synthetic sensibilities

Abstract

What is the relevance of aesthetics and sensibility for infrastructure? Drawing on the ideas of Jacques Rancière, Susan Sontag, and Gregory Bateson, the historical example of Frederick Law Olmsted, and a number of contemporary case studies, this essay argues that the value of aesthetics and sensibility lies in their ability to conceive of and produce infrastructural projects that are an integrated, multifunctional part of the landscape, rather than something isolated from it.

It is argued that such an understanding of infrastructure is increasingly important, as the interdependent social, environmental, economic, and political problems it is asked to tackle–for example, the issues associated with rising sea levels–cannot be solved using its traditional techniques of isolation and optimization. Rather, they demand the synthetic techniques and products produced by aesthetic practices such as landscape, architectural, and urban design.

• Infrastructure
• aesthetics
• sensibility
• water
• Gregory Bateson

Notes

1 For a historical perspective on the civic potential for infrastructure, see Poole (1998) and Cuff (2010).

2 sources illustrating such projects include: Bergdoll (2011); Weinstock (2013); shannon and smets (2010); mostafavi and Doherty (2010); White, sheppard, Bhatia, and Przybylski (2011); lloyd and stoll (2010); hauck, Keller, and Kleinekort (2011); and Waldheim (2006).

3 the us Government’s demand for bare bones ‘shovel ready’ projects in its American recovery and reinvestment Act (ArrA) of 2009 embodies the public sector’s attitude towards infrastructure in the us.

4 On the picturesque as a mode of perception, see Bois (1984) and macarthur (2007).

5 For Olmsted’s relationship to theorists of the picturesque, see Beveridge (2000). For his use of it in creating urban parkways and parks, see moga (2009).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David Salomon

David Salomon is the coordinator of the Architectural Studies programme at Ithaca College, where he teaches architecture history and design. He is the co-author of The Architecture of Patterns (Norton, 2008). He received his PhD from UCLA's Critical Studies in Architecture Culture programme.