Foundations 19 – Infrastructure Space

Architectural scale – Absorbing contemporary technologies

Forming a new unit

In earlier times, buildings served mainly to protect people from the elements and manifold dangers. But buildings were never cocoons; they always allowed interaction with the outside world, because light, people, and objects had to be permitted to come inside. Over the past 150 years, the permeability of buildings has steadily increased. This has been due in particular to new technologies such as electrification, air conditioning, the telephone, the inter- net, elevators, and so forth. Today buildings are linked with the outside world through numerous pipes and cables and often with wireless connections as well. But the infrastructure within build- ings is still usually separate from the design; architects leave these systems up to specialized engineers. How can this division be overcome? What would it mean to design architecture not chiefly to protect users but to support their ac- tivities? This workshop, headed by Georges Teyssot and Laurent Stalder, dealt with infrastructure space at the architectural scale.

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