strategic cities ; future architecture

Noel Brady

infrastructure : trans-generational investment
Infrastructure is the very visible and sometimes-invisible networks depend on to live the way we do. Involving staggering levels of investment and motivation it transcends generations. The normal return on investment that is expected from commercial enterprises is replaced by a willingness to spread the risk and benefits beyond the immediate to those political, social and cultural constituencies that follow. From the first 'undergrounds' in London, Paris and New York at the threshold of the twentieth century it is only now we truly appreciate the vision here now in the early twenty-first century in the teeming millions which are carried each day in and around these cities. The demands on energy, materials, labour and finances are so great that the plans of one generation are not fully reaped until the next.

infrastructure : strategic planning
Because infrastructural decisions fall outside normal qualitative/value- led issues strategic implications become the primary concern. It is no coincidence that many infrastructural applications originate from military concerns, from the fortified towns of the ancient and renaissance world, to the modern motorways and power plants. In the modern era there are other forms of infrastructural vision neither exclusively defensive nor offensive. From Robert Moses (1888-1981) whose ambitious public works projects of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s transformed the urban landscape of New York City, to more recent works such as the Channel Tunnel, the French TGV system and the recently opened �resund bridge that links Denmark to Sweden. Though these projects may not be military in origin they do offer significant strategic and economic opportunities.

Unlike their militaristic siblings they have to include all aspects of human endeavour, from business, to education, to living and culture. This is expressed in projects such as EuraLille, �resund and Schipol airport. In each case a city is emerging different from those that have gone before and makes possible new architectural expressions.

hub cities
The tendency to extract considerable advantage for transport hubs is clearly seen in transport cities form Schipol Airport to Euralille. These places tend towards a city within a city, virtually self-sufficient save the food, fuel and energy required to keep the place running.

Euralille shows us a form of vision of the future, where infrastructure makes it possible to energize a region and bring together the promise of an integrated landscape of architecture, urbanism and infrastructure. Lille, a small industrial town north of Paris seems an unlikely place for a strategic city. Close to the border of Belgium, a short distance from the coast and certainly not on the main road routes that criss-cross the Euroopean heartland. It did have one significant advantage, it is located on the new TGV route linking London and Paris via the Channel Tunnel and with planned links to Belgium and Holland to the North and Germany to the West Euralille is destined to become a significant hub city in the hinterland of Middle Europe.

Euralille consists of two main rail stations Lille Flandres (with TGV trains to Paris and regions) and Lille Europe (international HST trains to Europe). In the transport node thr high-speed lines to ins to Paris and regions) and Lille Europe (international HST trains to Europe). In the transport node three high-speed lines to Brussels, Paris and London converge with conventional trains, an underground, rapid trams, buses, roads and a motorway 'bypass. In 1995 70,000 passengers passed through Lille Flandres and 8000 through Lille Europe. It should be recognized that Lille is a city with only 168,000 inhabitants. It is because of this integration that it is possible for architects to make a contribution to this new urban experiment.

Because of the integration of road, rail and air transport with living working and educational Øresund in Denmark is likely to become the model of urban integration that may save the future of our cities. Oresund, is becoming a business and cultural hub between Copenhagen in Denmark and Malmo in Sweden. The fact that the link reaches shore close to Kastrup Airport is no accident.

Kastrup will as a result become the single most strategic airport in the whole region. At Øresport the regional rail station is provided with a vertical link to an integrated ground transport system of an already constructed automated metro system and buses. While it is due to be opened in 2002 the system is almost complete and under test. The integrated transport and innovative urban design is likely to lend Copenhagen and the �resund region a significant strategic advantage over cities within a 300 km area.

infrastructural architecture
Transport is the vital blood of cities, whether it is the canals of Venice, the streets of New York or the elevated trains of Chicago, in each case the transportation infrastructure makes visible our interrelations between functions and community. The way we navigate through our cities, by foot, bicycle, boat, car, bus or train requires commensurate scales of space and structure within which to move. This is the most fundamental condition of our cities. Our choice of movement is directly related to issues of efficiencies, consistency, comfort and dependability. The choice of transport infrastructure is one, which must look beyond this generation. It requires vision, a certain amount of forward planning and a lot of commitment. It also requires a broader sense of connections than that usually promoted in business since its partners range from the grass roots of community all the way up to national and regional government.

In 1992 after an examination of the Barcelona Olympic Village Master plan by MBM, we examined the possibility of utilizing the Olympic template to transform the then semi-redundant and under-utilized land of the North Docks area along the Tolka Basin. It was clear that the site could both accommodate the physical infrastructure of the Olympic Village as well as integrating new and old parts of Dublin, providing long-term housing as well as much-needed improvements to the amenities in the area by the creation of a new lake using a dam from the East Wall towards Vernon Avenue in Clontarf. The strategic importance of the site combined with the intimate links to existing transportation is we still believe of great importance to Dublin and its region.

The opportunity to provide a more intimate work in association with transport and infrastructural improvements came in the guise of a SAFA Urban Design Conference in 1993. Our project for Tbolo Bay, next to Saarinen's Main Train Station was an attempt to unify the rail access and provide an edge to the city.

lnfrastructural planning tends to have significant critics. For the most part infrastructural projects tend towards a singular goal, e.g. the road that goes from A to B but does not serve anything in between. Motorway construction, which expannnded in the 1960s on the back of cheap fuel prices, has left many areas a wasteland. Gaps between interchanges became a dumping ground for discarded machines and people. This project for Osaka in 1993 was based on a traditional Japanese print of Trout swimmming upstream. These Electronic AYLI were placed in between two overpasses and were a static point of reference against the continuous stream of traffic pouring past on the freeway.

In 1996 we produced a project for the UIA conference in Barcelona. The ZAAL Logistical Zone, uses the form of buildings as an environmental foil against the traffic to the south and a tree-lined series of interlocking gardens to the north. The form of buildings and spaces were designed to provide micro climates outside and wittthin the fabric of each activity. In addition a ground-based light rail connected the disparate sites to form a complete inter-related design.

Our most recent experience with infrastructural and strategic urban issues has been the development of Spencer Dock.

In early 1996, while uncertainty raged on about the lack of a suitable site for the National Conference Centre, we had begun work on a speculative rail link between Barrow Street Station and The North Wall in Dublin. This would necessitate an underground tunnel of approximately 1 kilometre in length. This provided a number of potential advantages. Firstly the overcrowded Victorian stations of Tara, Pearse and Connolly would be repatriated to the city and the smelly polluting diesels would be removed from the centre of the city along with the various bridges over Pearse Street and over the Liffey. To bring about this revolution we proposed the creation of a Central Rail Transit station allowing the fluid interconnection between buses, taxis, trains and eeeven a metro. When the Conference Centre was re-tendered we reissued our information to the relevant parties. It is clear that Spencer Dock is the only relevant Conference Site in Dublin and as such should have been the focus of six different tenders ratherncer Dock is the only relevant Conference Site in Dublin and as such should have been the focus of six different tenders rather than the orange and apples discussion that has since erupted. The opportunity to bring the transport net of Dublin into the twenty-first century is being lost to speculation and short-term investment. If we are serious about our infrastructure we must use trans-genn being lost to speculation and short-term investment. If we are serious about our infrastructure we must use trans generational benchmarks.

It is vital that architects interest themselves in issues of infrastructure. Without their guiding hand the experiment is likely to be narrowly defined. The opportunity of infrastructural architecture is to develop a truly integratedd urban landscape for the benefit of the citizen and city alike. All great cities have at their heart a pulsating infrastructure of transport. It is clear from the above that all current innovations in urban design and integrated architecture are by virtue of advances in transport technology.

invisible infrastructural or futurama
The future as seen on TV like Futurama is depressingly familiar. The Possibilities of the web and wireless world are being replaced by new forms of traditional systems of order, mmainly due to the expense of 'last mile' connections. The new centrality is leaving much of the same infrastructure in place. It is likely the form of cities will remain an urgent problem for architects since regardless of the idea of e-working, people will still feel the need to congregate, share stories, learn from each other and carry on as they have in social groups for the last thousand of years. The future as indicated by maglev experiments in Germany and Japan does offer us newer ecological possibilities for future infrastructural cities but unless architects get involved the decisions will be irrelevant unless the lessons of EuraLille and Øresund are learned.

Noel Brady is an architect and partner in NJBA Architects