Infrastructure Designs
Joseph Heathcott
Abstract
The examination of infrastructure designs in an expanded field presents a range of possibilities for new ways of understanding our interactions with the built world. Nineteenth-century French engineers coined the term to refer to the substrate of support for rail lines—the structure beneath the structure. Infrastructure from one era can be repurposed for another, as with the recent trend of converting decommissioned train lines into linear parks. Infrastructure has always been a factor in the exertion of violence in the world, sometimes in ways that are highly visible, and at other times occulted and obscure. Far from a uniform and straightforward expansion over time, infrastructure projects tend to be unleashed in nervous eruptions at key historical moments, often as exercises in war, nation-building, or imperial control. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.