Synopses & Reviews
As elements of the built landscape, works of infrastructure are a means rather than an end. Our cities' rail lines, bridges, highways, waterways and off-ramps are essential in a practical sense, but dead in a social one because they create boundaries that prevent one metropolis from physically connecting with another. Yet their very physical presence reveals hidden qualities key to revitalizing urban life. In Public Natures, New York City–based firm WEISS/MANFREDI tests such possibilities by crafting a hybrid manifesto/ monograph filled with essays, roundtable discussions, and recent projects that explore new opportunities for infrastructure.
Synopsis
Public Natures: Evolutionary Infrastructures explores the potential to shape a new public realm. Essays, roundtable discussions, and selected projects by WEISS/MANFREDI identify new terms, conditions, and models that insist architecture must evolve to create more productive connections between landscape, infrastructure, and urban territories. With a foreword by Barry Bergdoll and contributions from Kenneth Frampton, Preston Scott Cohen, Felipe Correa, Keller Easterling, Paul Lewis, Hashim Sarkis, and Nader Tehrani, Public Natures is both monograph and projective manifesto and suggests a new paradigm for infrastructure that is distinctly public in nature.
About the Author
Marion Weiss and Michael A. Manfredi are the founders of the award-winning New York City–based firm WEISS/MANFREDI. Weiss is the Graham Chair Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. Manfredi is the Gensler Visiting Professor at Cornell University.