Richard Ingersoll argues that sprawl should not simply be criticized but recognized as a new form of urbanism that has undeniably succeeded as a social milieu. Any solution to issues caused by sprawl, like resource use and energy waste, must take this success into consideration. Ingersoll reviews how certain infrastructure elements like freeway overpasses can find beauty and be seen as works of modern art through their relation to concepts like the sublime. While Brasilia achieved formal beauty through its monumental architecture and spaces, its lack of urban vitality shows exploiting infrastructure only for artistic intentions without allowing for community can render a place more like a sculpture than a living city. Bridges in particular have historically received artistic attention and interpretation due to

1. Presentation by Ola Faworaja
Author: Richard Ingersoll

2. Richard Ingersoll makes the surprising claim that sprawl is an inevitable reality of modern life
that should be addressed more thoughtfully and recognized as its own new form of urbanism
rather than simply being criticized and condemned. In five thought-provoking chapters,
covering topics such as tourism, film, and the automobile, Ingersoll takes the position that any
solution to the problems of sprawl including pressing issues like resource use and energy waste
must take into consideration its undeniable success as a social milieu.

3. Infrastructure asArt
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Ymx9e66vrGc/SZ9-_SGfJaI/AAAAAAAAH1k/HtTYWORehrM/s400/nudo8uh.jpg
La Trinitat, a freeway park by Enrich
Batlle and Joan Roig, Barcelona, 1992.
In this chapter, the author Richard Ingersoll reviews the
possibilities of finding the beauty in elements such as freeway
overpasses and link this to the aesthetic of the sublime in 20th
century avant garde visual culture.
Westminster Footbridge by Norman Forster
London, 2000.

4. In the end perhaps the onlny visually satisfying experiment of infrastructure and linear organization is
that of brazilia. Planned by Lucio Costa and filled with the monumental architecture of Oscar Niemeyer.
By most accounts, the formal beauty of Brasilias spaces is not sufficient compensation for its lack of urban
vitality. The neighborhoods which are organized in large frames or supercuadras, are functional from the
point view of automobile circulation but do not permit neighbors path to cross. To exploit infrastructure
principally for artistic intentions, without allowing for urban intimacy, has rendered Brasilia Like an
enormous sculpture, with few possibilities for the variety of urban life to take over.
Brasilia, Brazil’s capital, planned by Lucio
Costa, 1954 -1960

5. Until the twentieth century, the idea of infrastructure as art was usually regarded as a need for decoration.
A work of public art like a sculpture or fresco was always considered additive not inherent to the
functional structure. Among works of infrastructure the bridge because of its uniting role has always
engendered critical responses and symbolic interpretations and received particular artistic attention. This
dialogue between technique and form in bridge making provides the foundation for an eventual theory of
infrastructure as art.
From Decoration to Decontextualization
Ijburg Bridge by Nicholas Grimshaw, Amsterdam, 2002