Literary References
Extrastatecraft:
Extrastatecraft:
The Power of Infrastructure Space
Keller Easterling
Extrastatecraft outlines the standardization of infrastructural and architectural operations and examines how they have lead to a monotonous condition of Foreign Trade Zones throughout the world. Easterling uses several case studies spanning several scales to articulate the disadvantages and dangers of continued development under these standard practices that are seldom questioned by those controlling their futures. Behind these controlling entities Easterling exposes the heirarchical connections between governmental bodies and their relationships with global corporations.
InfraEcoLogi Urbanism
InfraEcoLogi Urbanism
A Project for the Great Lakes Megaregion
RVTR
In this published project RVTR proposes a model of future growth infrastructure for the specified region of the Great Lakes. The project addresses a “post-metropolitan condition” that is emerging in the region and the need for intense innovation to face the shifting modalities of populous needs and development expectations. The interventions explore the possible avenues design might find agency in while new urbanisms and settlements arise to accomodate flux.
Infrastructure As Architecture
Designing Composite Networks
Katrina Stoll & Scott Lloyd
This currated publication brings together architectural and urban theorists and practioners to postulate on future and emerging methods of infrastructure allocation, design, and management. The book outlines projects and writings from RVTR, Keller Easterling, and Lateral Office as well as many others that provide a bevy of viewpoints for different contexts and situations. The work largely centers around the networked nature of globalized and regionalized systems and how we can barrow from procedures of systems thinking.
Inventing the Future
Folk Politics and the Left
Nick Srnicek & Alex Williams
This manifesto postulates a near future of increased automation in which we see the familiar structures of labor and international distribution become nearly obsolete. It also provides a radical viewpoint that the tools already exist to make a change in developed society and the imagination should be held in much higher regard in this arena. Proposing a counter to the stagnation and wastefulness of we have been provided with through modernity, the work also highlights an increased need for grass roots (post)working class power, one that directly opposes practices like exclusive extrastatecraft.
The Rule of Logistics
Walmart and the Architecture of Fulfillment
Jesse LeCavalier
The Rule of Logistics tells the story of Walmart’s buildings in the context of the corporation’s entire operation, itself characterized by an obsession with logistics. Beginning with the company’s founding in 1962, Jesse LeCavalier reveals how logistics—as a branch of knowledge, an area of work, and a collection of processes—takes shape and changes our built environment. Weaving together archival material with original drawings, LeCavalier shows how a diverse array of ideas, people, and things—military theory and chewing gum, Howard Dean and satellite networks, Hudson River School painters and real estate software, to name a few—are all connected through Walmart’s logistical operations and in turn are transforming how its buildings are conceptualized, located, built, and inhabited.
