Summary

Points & Lines: By Stan Allen  Literary Summary:  Ansel Blanco

 

Infrastructure can be thought of as the organizational value of the supporting mainframe.  Like in ships, cars and airplanes, infrastructure is considered to be the organized forces of production.

The framework of a particular object can be analyzed as spatial and, “thought of to justify an architecture of surface an sign”, according to the writing by Stan Allen. Infrastructural Urbanism understands architecture to be known as the material practice of the framework. 

Allen says that it is the large scale of master planning and the ego of the individual architect that causes the escapes of our suspect notions.  Rem Koolhaas calls it the “semantic nightmare”. It is interesting to note that Allen writes about how architects cannot be held logically accountable, but it can be argued that the design of a theoretical framework would structuralize and justify architecture, and could have prevented their own marginalization.

Our suspect notions are our ability to suspect that there is a problem with representational architecture. That we return to architecture as an instrument of design, applying the techniques used to create the field condition or “directed fields” as Stan Allen says, thus allowing the development (program, event, and activity) to, “play itself out”.

Allen speaks about the problems of infrastructure urbanism as well. Problems like territory, communication, and speed but he seems to recognize architecture as a discipline always evolving to reach a solution. In this case, the specific technical means to effectively deal with these variables: Mapping, projection, calculation, notation and visualization. Infrastructural urbanism is more concerned with the performance, the calibration, and less concerned with what it looks like, what it can do is more important.

I believe the most important of the seven propositions Allen discussed in the essay is the first one: the construction of the site as opposed to the construction of specific buildings. The creation of the field condition for future events is what infrastructure can be said to accomplish. The second proposition simply distinguishes it from the predetermined master planning: “Infrastructures are flexible and anticipatory, they work with time and are open to any change, “a loose envelope”.