A study on infrastructure-centered publicness in urban public space through a look at Dutch architectural policies and practices

Abstract

This thesis works toward the development of a method for infrastructure-centered publicness in the design of urban public space by looking into the relationship between infrastructure and public space, keeping in mind changes in the concept of publicness in the age of globalization and personalization, in the context of Dutch architectural policies. This relationship shows two distinctive characteristics: "accessibility and adaptability of urban public space focused on infrastructure" and "diversity and specificity of the liminal space constructed by infrastructure." The former demands an integrative environmental design approach to designing public space and traffic space in order to acquire a multilayered architectural program incorporating attention to urban infrastructure, while the latter implies that infrastructure has been transformed into the foundation of everyday life. This indicates the possibility of producing a new shared space unreflected in the division between public and private space. The "infrarchitecturbanism" broadly discussed in Europe nowadays is merely a combination of architecture and dispersed infrastructure as a new condition for social mobility and communication, indicating the need for an urban landscape with attention not only to architecture but also to public space in contact with infrastructure and the urban landscape at the same time.