Infrastructure: Places: Design Observer

Infrastructure

05.20.10: Center for Urban Pedagogy

The Water Underground
On Places, watch The Water Underground, a video from the Center for Urban Pedagogy that tracks the complex — and contested — systems of water supply, treatment and waste that serve New York City.
READ MORE

04.22.10: Paho Mann, Nancy Levinson

The Art of Solid Waste
On Places, a slideshow of photographer Paho Mann's images of post-consumer detritus — a.k.a. trash — part of a new public art project at a solid waste facility in Phoenix, Arizona.
READ MORE

01.25.10: Ian Baldwin

Architect, Park Thyself
The auto-urban relationship, writes Ian Baldwin, is "fumbling, overheated, unsatisfying for both parties." Baldwin reviews House of Cars: Innovation and the Parking Garage, currently on exhibit at the National Building Museum, and The Architecture of Parking, by Simon Henley.
READ MORE

01.20.10: Christine Macy

Dams Across America
A gallery of images showing the construction of some great U.S. hydroelectric dams of the 1930s and '40s, including Hoover and Grand Coulee — something to contemplate as the current administration struggles to stimulate the economy and smarten the power grid.
READ MORE

01.18.10: Nancy Levinson

The Public Works
Why isn't the Great Recession inspiring a new New Deal? The essential dilemma, argues Places editor Nancy Levinson, is that we no longer believe in public sector solutions — or even in the public itself.
READ MORE

01.10.10: Linda Samuels

Working Public Architecture
Can we envision a contemporary counterpart to the New Deal of the 1930s? Architect Linda Samuels reports on WPA 2.0, the ambitious competition and symposium created by cityLab at UCLA.
READ MORE

10.20.09: Thomas Fisher

Fracture Critical
Much U.S. infrastructure is "fracture critical" — vulnerable to catastrophic and systemic failure; Thomas Fisher argues that our finance, housing and energy systems are fracture-critical as well.
READ MORE

09.24.09: Barbara Penner

Niagara: It Has It All
Architectural historian Barbara Penner reviews Inventing Niagara, by Ginger Strand, drawing out the contradictory mix of reverence and exploitation inspired by the famous falls.
READ MORE

09.18.09: Ian Baldwin

The Past Is Promenade
Architect Ian Baldwin contemplates the High Line and sees in New York's newest park a rare and valuable form of urban place: a slow corridor.
READ MORE

09.12.09: Chris Reed

The Infrastructural City
Los Angeles depends upon vast infrastructural systems that are breathtakingly powerful, yet vulnerable to disruption, even disaster. Landscape architect Chris Reed reviews The Infrastructural City.

05.19.09: Dana Cuff

Design after Disaster

05.19.09: Claudia Ziegler

Out of Ashes and Rubble: The Pirelli Tower

05.19.09: Linda Samuels

Infrastructural Optimism
Learning from New Orleans, or why we really need a new New Deal.
READ MORE

Places

Departments

Topics

Design Observer