Table of contents for Topos 96 in Topos

Moving is essential to us for our reproduction, trade, and social exchange. The places where we live have usually originated at crossings of trade routes over water and over land, at mountain passes, around train stations, at fords or in deltas. All of these are natural or created meeting places, where it has been relatively easy to travel or where different routes converged. Our mobility these days is tremendous, and in order to be this mobile, we use many different infrastructures on a daily basis. We have a historically grown system of networks at our disposal. Our society is based on these global systems and networks of infrastructure – universal and generic in one respect, local and specific in another. By car, you can get to almost every address in…

Located in the Valley of Mexico at 2,200 metres above sea level, the basin of Mexico City has no natural drainage outlet for water. As such, floods, droughts, and other water-related dynamics have always been part of the region. When the Aztecs founded their capital city Tenochtitlan here in 1325, they engineered an impressive system of water infrastructures, including dikes, locks, aqueducts, and chinampas: small, rectangular islands filled with fertile dredged soil to grow crops. This half-natural, half-artificial landscape was at once productive, environmentally sensitive, and spatially distinctive. It both provided protection against floods and allowed for the irrigation and lacustrine transport of agricultural crops. Even up until the 20th century, the region hosted several shallow lakes that fluctuated between one to three metres during the wet and dry seasons,…

Henry David Thoreau is the well-known North-American ethical pioneer of many of our worries regarding the major problem of our planet today, the global environmental crisis. It is almost impossible not to be deeply touched by his decision on the 4th July 1845, to move from his hometown Concord to the wooden shores of pound Walden, only some miles away in the Massachusetts countryside. He wanted, according to his own words, “to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life”. The literary depiction of his two-year-long solitary experience in the heart of nature can be found in his masterpiece, Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854). However, the reader will not find in the hundreds of pages of this philosophical pilgrimage a mention of the author’s serious blunder…

Imposing walls level out height differences of up to 12 metres between the city and the water in the area stretching from the Dreirosenbrucke (three roses) bridge in Basel to the French border. These partitions divide the riverside, which is 30 metres wide in places, into a flood-safe promenade and the deeper-lying Bermenweg path. This is where a series of gates and showers embedded in the walls await swimmers who enjoy the waters of the Rhine. The paved promenade opens out into small gravel areas on the upper level. Curved wooden benches nestled under sparse willows and alders offer passers-by the chance to stop and enjoy a clear view of the fast-flowing river. Stairs and ramps lead from the Dreirosenbrucke bridge down to the water and weave the various different…

What makes urban space acessible? What are the keys to guaranteeing that residents and outside visitors alike will take ownership of it and use it? How can green infrastructure foster maximum openness of the public realm? And finally: what can technical innovations contribute to transform cities into truly integrative places? The forum “Connective Spaces”, hosted by Topos, the German architecture magazine Baumeister and lighting specialist Schreder, investigated these crucial questions, sparking lively debates between four participants from very different backgrounds: landscape architect Leonard Grosch (Atelier Loidl, Berlin), architect Jan Liesegang (Raumlabor, Berlin), academic expert Undine Giseke (Technical University Berlin) and Schreder top manager Ernst Smolka. One conclusion, however, they all agreed on: the success of future cities depends on the extent to which existing professions, more precisely the professionals who…

Urban public space is big business today. Cities across the world are constructing expensive new parks, promenades and other new high-profile public projects. This may seem on the surface to be a boost for the collective, civic dimension of the urban experience, a vote of confidence in the urban commons. But many of the spectacular new public spaces being constructed in cities today are privately financed and controlled. They speak more to the domination of urban development by elites than they do to the democratic spirit of the city. The Garden Bridge, a planned pedestrian crossing in Central London, exemplifies these trends. The Garden Bridge is planned to span the River Thames from Temple to the South Bank. The 366-meter-long concrete and steel construction is designed to appear as a…

Recent empirical evidence and scientific data suggest that climate change is happening with now irreversible dynamics. Numerous effects will have consequences for the territory, for cities and for infrastructure itself, not the least important being airports, considering the fundamental role air transport plays in today’s world. The airport of the future will necessarily be re-shaped and transformed in a changing climate. Airports are, in fact, highly vulnerable infrastructures requiring precise adaptation and mitigation strategies at various levels. Recurrent floods, rising seas, desertification, land impoverishment and more generally extreme meteorological events can temporarily or permanently compromise mobility networks and spaces. Three Principal Issues Within this complex situation, three principal issues must be clarified. The first concerns the uncertainty and variability of scientific predictions on future climate change. We know that during…

Amsterdam’s central station is connected to the European high-speed network, which can be understood as a part of an urban model. In this model, local centres that have high densities of supply form a complementary polycentric system, both in terms of Western Europe as well as within their own agglomerations. The failure to construct a high-speed rail link from Amsterdam to the German border is therefore one of the many shortsighted decisions made in the history of mobility in Holland. As a result, an ICE travelling to Frankfurt must first travel through Arnhem to the Dutch border at a snail’s pace of 130 km/h. Upon reaching the border, it can accelerate to about 250 km/h – the average speed of the German high-speed network. ICE vs. TGV. The train ride…

In 2002, the BNSF Logistics Park in Elwood, Illinois opened on the site of a decommissioned U.S. Army munitions plant. The freight yard and its adjacent Union Pacific port in Joliet now constitute the largest inland port in the United States. Just a year earlier and some 40 miles northeast, in Chicago, after decades of declining manufacturing in the area, Canadian Pacific ended all freight traffic on a nearly three-mile industrial corridor embedded in 19thcentury urban fabric. On June 6, 2015, this 17-foot-high raised embankment opened to the public as the 606, a park network comprising the 2.7-mile-long bike and running path known as the Bloomingdale Trail, four adjacent at-grade parks (with two more planned), and 12 access points. The project resulted from a planning and design process that involved…

One of the most shocking scenes of recent television history occurs in Season Two of HBO’s “The Wire”: thirteen unidentified young women are discovered dead in a container at the docks of Baltimore port. A crucial element in this scene that reveals the horrors of modern human trafficking is the shipping container – a standardized box made of steel, with suitable strength to sustain the shipment, storage, and handling that it undergoes as it travels across oceans and continents. In the universe of today’s globalized capitalist economy it is as ubiquitous as it is indispensable. Logistically, the invention of the modern shipping container was a stroke of genius. Ethically, the situation is more complicated. Technology is ambivalent per se. It can be put to use by good motives as well…

With an area of 25,000 square kilometres and a population of five million, the island of Sicily is one of the most densely populated regions in Europe, if one allows for the fact that the majority of its inhabitants reside along the coast and large swaths of the interior are virtually uninhabited. Palermo is the capital of the region, with a metropolitan area spanning along the northern coast of the island for some 110 square kilometres. Since the late 20th century there has been a peculiar attitude of neglect of the formerly remarkable public spaces inherited from the past. For most people “public” means “nobody’s” instead of “everyone’s”. Segregation from the sea. In Palermo the public space is the waterfront. The social degradation of the meaning of public values manifests…

More risk-taking for children The popularity of theme playgrounds is increasing. Swings, seesaws, sand boxes – that’s the way things used to be. Theme playgrounds are now the order of the day when it comes to providing children with opportunities to play and exercise. And, it is even better when such facilities are integrated into the local environment, i.e make use of existing topography and natural materials such as stones, plants, soil and especially water. Cities and communities around the world have recognised this, as have operators of tourist resorts, amusement parks and camp grounds. Those interested in attracting families have to expand the range of activities they offer children. But what are the current trends concerning this type of playground? Although there doesn’t appear to be any one particular…