VIRTUAL MADRID FOCUS ON PEDAGOGY

Abstract

As the design community increasingly looks to create places that are environmentally sensitive and socially responsible, there is an opportunity to utilize infrastructure as a tool to facilitate these goals. As noted in Renewable Energy Landscapes: Designing Place-Based Infrastructure for Scale by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, infrastructure can be versatile and sensitive to place, in turn generating local value, resiliency to climate disruptions, and multi-functionality of sites. However, this requires a shift in approach. Infrastructure has historically been designed predominantly by engineers with goals of economy and efficiency. Furthermore, infrastructural sites have intentionally been located outside of city life such that they can be forgotten – until a crisis disturbs these very systems that make contemporary inhabitation of the built environment possible. There exists an opportunity to reimagine how designed, small-scale infrastructures can be developed and implemented for community and environmental benefit. In a course at the University of Texas at Arlington, architecture students developed design projects centered around infrastructure to advocate for social and environmental resilience in Texas. To align the project deliverables with the design project goals of making the invisible visible and reach audiences in a different way that is historically rooted in activism, students developed zines that were disseminated throughout the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. The project demonstrates how typical aspects of architectural practice – design thinking and graphic production – can both be expanded outside of typical architectural project typologies and in turn advocate for novel, sustainable design ideas and reach the public through new platforms.