Review
The Infrastructural City will drive you way beyond Los Angeles. The idiosyncrasies, stories and lessons described are thought-provoking enough to make you look at your own city with a more inquisitive eye. --We Make Money Not Art The outcome of four years research on the changing conditions of infrastructure in Los Angeles, this book is a fascinating excavation of the unique workings of the largest city on the West Coast, but one that illuminates conditions found elsewhere. --ARCHIDOSE As commissions continue to elude practitioners during the current global economic malaise, architects and urban planners may be left wondering where they went wrong. The Infrastructural City will help them. ----Tropolism
With funding now in sight, [The Infrastructural City] reminds us of the unseen physical pieces and a designer's role...The timing could hardly be better for The Infrastrucural City ... A doggedly detailed guide to Los Angeles as a physical thing. --The Los Angeles Times
Product Description
Once the greatest American example of a modern city served by infrastructure, Los Angeles is now in perpetual crisis. Infrastructure has ceased to support architecture's plans for the city and instead subordinates architecture to its own purposes. This out-of-control but networked world is increasingly organized by flows of objects and information. Static structures avoid being superfluous by joining this system as temporary containers for the people, objects, and capital. A provocative collection of research through photography, essays and maps, this is book looks at infrastructure as a way of mapping our place in the city, remaining optimistic about the role of architecture to affect change.