Definition

Landscape -
the organization of space

Landscape is a medium

The landscape is a medium, a medium that adapts and a medium that is evolving. The concept of landscape, especially in its relationship to nature exists in a timeline that goes from religious reflection, to theories of beauty, to existing as a juxtaposition to city life (Central Park). These events tie into man’s growth, mentally and technologically. To today where a concept of landscape urbanism is introduced. This I understood to be the landscape’s continual transformation in a time where man has realized errors in planning, importance of nature, and acceptance of a new layer into the city. It is this integration of landscape to the city that develops the concept of landscape infrastructure. It becomes the landscape that provides the blank sheet to be designed for activity and programs. The same way the city relies on electrical grids or sewage systems it now needs a methodology to incorporate the landscape. But rather than including the landscape in last, it becomes the job of the architect to design a process and lay out a model for the new city. This threading of integral layers (historical, natural, man-made, scientific) involved in our way of life is landscape urbanism in the way I understood it.

Landscape
land-scape [lan(d)-skāp]
1a: a picture representing a view of natural inland scenery b: the art of depicting such scenery
2a: the landforms of a region in the aggregate b: a portion of territory that can be viewed at one time from one place c: a particular area of activity

"infrastructural urbanism"

Stan Allen begins this chapter with three images spanning six decades of the twentieth century. These images take us down a path of design frameworks that go from cultural/aesthetic to technological to economically productive. This developed into what he describes as "semiotic architecture" taking away from architectures versatility and "discursive system". This of course is not to be fully blamed on the architect, but on social, economic and political shifts of the time. The path reveals architecture's continuous metamorphosis in responding to the dynamic system around it. This first point is taken and noted and the author then heads down a line that defiantly states, "One affect of this shift toward images and signs is that architecture's disciplinary frame shifts. It finds itself in competition with other discursive media - painting, film, literature, the internet, performance art - a field in which architecture often seems to come up short. What these other media lack, of course, is architecture's powerful instrumentality - its capacity to not only critique, but also to actually transform reality." This statement is a bold definition for architecture, although I question its full validity. It is true the architecture becomes more than just an art, model, or concept, it becomes transformed into a space of social activity, program, and function, all regulated to a certain extent by the architecture itself. But this is only in the physical world, in the metaphysical world, it can become the painting, the novel, or the movie that influence and alter our realities. These other elements guide and express the human condition just as well as the building. I have to point of course my knowledge of specific examples of design and architecture of that time are limited and I'm unsure of specific examples Stan Allen may be citing too, so what I could be saying could not relate.
Anyway the chapter continues with the introduction of the term infrastructural urbanism which I decided to break down for understanding.

infrastructure
in-fra-struc-ture [in-fruh-struhk-cher]
- the basic, underlying framework or features of a system or organization
urbanism
ur-ban-ism [ur-buh-niz-uhm]
- the way of life of people who live in a large city.

A model in which architecture is understood as a material practice that "works in and among the world of things, not exclusively with meaning and image." This transforms the system to a level that is closer involved with the larger system around it. The world is an ecology of systems (ecosystem) parts and pieces that all fit together and work together. So is infrastructure then this basic framework connecting these systems? The message I understood through the text revealed the answer is yes and it becomes what I perceive as form and function working together, neither following the other. Infrastructure can then be thought of as a systematic configuration linking elements of a site, design, and context. How are the pieces working together and what are their relationships to the space become the questions to ask.
Understanding these conditions and considerations I fail to see these concepts applied in either the reconstruction of the Souks of Beruit or the Logistical Activities Zone in Barcelona. His idea of unity "achieved by the continuous rhythm of the roof structure" to me feels disconnected from the rest of the site. It begins to enclose an outside space and looses connection to tradition, especially in the Beruit example. I fail to see the need for a tangible structure when addressing infrastructure or infrastructural urbanism, not to say that it can't be. When I think of these connections especially when design is considering, space, program, and function there are more typologies that must be taken into consideration. These roof structures are missing something, especially since urbansim is the way of life of people in a city. Or perhaps it becomes an understanding that went way over my head.

First Reading

The reading for this week is Infrastructural Urbanism, Chapter 2 from Stan Allen's "Points + Lines: Diagrams and Projects for the City".