ADAPT: Nodes, Infrastructure and Prefabricated Architecture As A Generator of Nodal Urbanism in St. Louis

Abstract

t is my intention to revise the theory of the modernist urban planner, Ludwig Hilberseimer, in order to provide a basis for the use of urban mapping as a tool for the architectural mixture of consolidation, erasure and infrastructure as a generator of adaptable nodal urbanism. The resulting facility will actually be a web of infrastructure that uses reinvigorated nodes as structural joints that respond to the local context of their site in order to succor the city as a whole in a long term rejoinder to the urban crisis. The former importance of St. Louis as an American hub is present in its recently renovated and readapted Union Station, unparalleled in grandeur in the United States. But this architectural landmark can't save a city which is amongst the nations leaders in segregation and economic stagnation. The Gateway Arch is another architectural marvel that does little but stop tourists passing through to quickly visit its museum and the nearby Laclede's Landing. The city has begun an ambitious plan to revive the downtown by the year 2004, but the rest of the city fails to have any real part in this undertaking. It is this territory that my focus will be on, choosing three from ten nodes, each at its own level of need, and their linking infrastructure to provide a series of design responses.