Live Blog: Networked Ecologies: Infra-Architecture

Mason White
University of Toronto
Lateral Architecture
InfraNet Lab
"Networked Ecologies: Infra-Architecture"

Since he is used to talking to architects, this is a refreshing opportunity to explore this topic without having to first educate his audience on the different nature of the landscape.

Four figures have provided guidance for this presentation:

• Benton MacKaye - coined the term geotechnics: where human settlement encounters nature
• Constantine Doxiadis - Ekistics - Ecumenopolis - a continuous city
• Cedric Price - Potteries Thinkbelt - advanced site finding
• Keller Easterling - Organization of space - Enduring innocence -

In thinking about infrastructure - somewhere in the mix there is an immense amount of science, but also an opportunity for an immense amount of design

The networks of food, economics, aeroponics, hydroponics and infrastructure are all about SYSTEMS.

One student project was from Scotland looking at seaweed agriculture. How is it moved? How is it stored? The design looked at a net system with a drying tower and seed farm on the land. The multiple public lives it could have include a nighttime use as a lighthouse.

Another project looked at the possibility of merging speculative office space with sustainable agriculture/greenhouse space.

Both have great graphics. Be sure to look closer.

In Reykjavik they looked at turning runways into greenways for production, civic/ecology, and recreations.

Their final project was a metis garden inspired by the map that changed the world and brought in soil samples from throughout Canada.