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Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers, and Peter Rice’s 1970s design for the Centre Pompidou in Paris is a landmark of infrastructural architecture: a building conceived as a collective connection and integration mechanism that laid bare its inner workings. Expressing the idea of building-as-machine, the architectural design rendered its structure and systems visible and intelligible, not to mention an essential part of the architectural composition.
The concept of the “machine” in architecture may be understood in two ways. On one hand, as an allegory of progress, an example being the Pantheon, which is both a cosmological machine and a monument to the technical advancement of Roman civilization. On the other, it may be manifested as concrete, physical, and mechanical mechanisms in which technological dimension is repurposed as architectural language.
The building-as-machine concept underpins the Damen
Green Line Transit Station in Chicago, designed by Perkins & Will and inaugurated in 2024. Purposefully leaving the structural core visible, the architects reconnected architecture with a full gamut of complex expressive elements. The building foregrounds materials and technical components (beams, columns, infrastructure systems), transforming the typically concealed, the operational machine that makes a building function into part of the architectural composition.
Damen Station is a multimodal transit hub delivering new connectivity and urban amenities to residents, workers, and visitors in a neighborhood undergoing renewal west of downtown Chicago. The new station enriches the everyday public transport experience and is a catalyst for local community development. Design principal Ralph Johnson explains: “The station demonstrates the potential of infrastructure as a civic and cultural symbol. More than just a transit hub, it is a welcoming public space that reflects the city’s character, its ambitions and the...
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Printed
Reassembling the Future through Circular Design
Yasmin Rehmanjee
In the editorial, “Circular Design Reprogramming the Future,” Yasmin Rehmanjee argues that circular design represents a major shift in the buildin...
Calder Gardens
Herzog & de Meuron
For the Master Letter From America column, Raymund Ryan reports on Calder Gardens in Philadelphia by Herzog & de Meuron...
Language of Today
Frida Escobedo
In the Conversation column, Philip Jodidio discusses Frida Escobedo, one of the most exciting figures in contemporary architecture...
