werk, bauen + wohnen 7/8 – 2025

Focus on the background

What is grey, big, costs a lot of money, and changes only slowly? Our technical infrastructure: chimney stacks out of which clouds of smoke billow, tubes through which motor cars speed, basins in which sewage combs revolve, antennae that poke into the sky. These are not spaces for a gala dinner, they are the engine rooms of our civilization. Through this infrastructure we organize our daily mobility, our communication, the provision and disposal of materials and energy. It makes things easier for us and helps us to go further. We are dependent on it and yet often it remains invisible or, at least, in the background. Sometimes we even overlook it, as it is simply too large.

We have learned in recent years just how sensitive system-relevant structures are — shortage of raw materials made it necessary to economize, solidarity was called for, as were new ideas about how to make these systems and facilities more resilient. The demands of climate change, too, require the adaptation of the technical infrastructure, in particular water management and energy supply. The public sector as client must come up with the funding. Updating and upgrading existing facilities is often expensive and difficult, planning must look far ahead. But among the general population there is a high level of support for such projects. If no more power came from the electrical sockets our daily lives would be turned upside down.

Increasingly, urban development and infrastructures compete for space, especially in the urban context. is issue shows that today a grey giant such as the tunnel that encases the motorway in Schwamendingen must be more than just a purely functional structure. It carries the Ueberlandpark and in this way provides ecological connectivity. At the same time, it creates valuable outdoor space for this growing district. Other projects, too, such as the playground in the former wastewater settlement basin in Aproz or the motorway maintenance centre in Uri that is clad with discarded crash barriers stand for a beneficial reinterpretation of infrastructural legacies. The Funicular da Graça in Lisbon shows that through the construction of a new funicular railway everything can remain much as it was but becomes less arduous. It shows, too, what infrastructure is also there for: for pleasure. — Lucia Gratz