Unboxing Urban Infrastructure: Three Methodologies for infrastructure-oriented Urban Design and Architecture Education

Abstract

Although the exploration of infrastructure has become a main focus of urban-centered studies and urban theory over the last decade, it has only been partially adopted into design and planning education. Here, the traditional curriculum of architecture, urban planning, landscape architecture, and urban design offers emerging professionals limited guidance and tools for exploring and analyzing the complex assemblages and constituting systems that create, run, and shape cities. However, in times of dramatic need for systemic transformation, the critical and research-based analysis of the city’s externalities and the flows underlying urban life will become more relevant by the day. Thus, the following article outlines three teaching methodologies for analyzing “infrastructural regimes” as key levers and contexts to embed a reflected and responsive design work directed at transformation towards global sustainability.