[Re]Connecting Communites: Activating the Infrastructural Void

Abstract

"Once, a city was divided in two parts.

One part became the Good Half, the other part the Bad Half.

The inhabitants of the Bad Half began to flock to the good part of the divided city, rapidly swelling into an urban exodus.

If this situation had been allowed to continue forever, the population of the Good Half would have doubled, while the Bad Half would have turned into a ghost town"

_ Rem Koolhaas

There is a tendency in recent urban development to allow for networks outside of architecture and urban planning to guide the development and growth of cities. To the cities' detriment they have become disconnected and isolated fragments of a once functional and united community. In his Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture, Rem Koolhaas calls for an "architectural warfare against undesirable conditions." The highway interchange system found in many cities around the world could be considered such a condition. However, there can be more optimistic interpretations of such a site. The interchange provides an opportunity to rethink the interstitial spaces of a wasted landscape. An architectural intervention woven into the figure of an interchange can be the structure needed to graft the city to its original system of connectivity.

The goal of this thesis is to investigate the possibilities of placing a unifying architectural form into an infrastructural wasteland.