Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press 2010 Author: Infranet Lab/Lateral Office ISBN: 9781568989853 Format: Paperback, 80pp, 178 x 216mm
Volume number 30 in Princeton's Pamphlet Architecture series, Coupling presents six daring projects for an infrastructure ideas competition: a high-speed rail system across the Bering Strait that collects fresh water from the ice shelf; a decommissioned airport transformed into a geothermal data and food farm; thickening on/off ramps around "big box" stores into circular parking lots; a call to include landfills in the list of preserved open spaces; and a saline terminal lake turned into a water farm.
Coupling argues that infrastructures behave as artificially maintained natural systems. Rather than a New Deal approach of massive engineering or iconic infrastructure, Coupling employs adaptable, responsive, small-scale interventions whose impacts are global in scale.