Arquitectura

Infrastructure, as we know it, no longer belongs in the exclusive realm of engineers and transportation planners. In the context of our rapidly changing cities and towns, infrastructure is experiencing a paradigm shift where multiple-use programming and the integration ot latent ecologies is a primary consideration. Defining contemporary infrastructure requires a multi-disciplinary team of landscape architects, engineers, architects and planners to fully realize the benefits to our cultural and natural systems. This book examines the potential of landscape as infrastructure via essays by notable authors and supporting case studies by SWA landscape architects and urban designers, among them the technologically innovative roof domes for Renzo Piano's California Academy of Science in San Francisco, the restoration of the Buffalo Bayou in Houston, and several master plans for ecological corridors in China and Korea. Case studies are described extensively with technical diagrams and plans for repositioning infrastructure as a viable medium for addressing issues of ecology, transit, urbanism, performance and habitat.