Infrastructural architecture: social design for the public realm in underground transit systems
Date
2019-04-10
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
There’s a certain allure and poeticism to
mass transit, from buses, to streetcars, and trains.
It’s curious that a strictly infrastructural marvel
of engineering houses such an honest and diverse
application of shared architecture, mutual in it’s
urban scope. In many ways, the architecture of
these utilitarian transit spaces (subways most
notably), are comparable in their role to that of
the public square, court, or forum. There is an
untold architectural relationship within these
urban environments between subways as a space
of movement, and as a place of activity.
This thesis aims to re-examine subways
under this lens. To posit that subways offer more
to the urban fabric than a functional vessel for
movement, and are indeed vital at providing
opportunity for social life to flourish in an urban
context. Questions of democratizing space, spatial
legitimacy, functionalism, and the dichotomy
between space and place, arise when examining
these constructs of subterranean infrastructure.
These relationships will be explored by
studying and reimagining a particular site along
the City of Toronto’s subway system, specifically;
Spadina Station. It is the intersection of both the
University-Yonge Line, the Bloor Line, as well as
the terminal to the Spadina Avenue streetcar. The
key methods of research for this study include
studying, drawing, and photographing the space
to better understand it’s prescriptive needs, and
to inform a modified architectural response and
proposal.
Ultimately, this project aims to be didactic in its thinking with regards to infrastructural
architecture through proposal work. The core of
transit is the people who use it, and it must be understood that these people interact socially with
their surroundings, far beyond just the isolated
motions of coming and going. We must ask how
utilitarian infrastructure can shift it’s functional
role in cities to reclaim the public realm as a space
of communal activity, and shared program.
Description
Keywords
public transit, urban infrastructure, ocial architecture, the public realm, subways, rapid mass transit, station design, functionalism, social justice, urban sociology, underground architecture, Toronto, event space, busking, social accessibility, Jane Jacobs, Richard Sennett, New York City Subway