RVTR Research Vision Transformation Realization, a design research practice with studios based in Toronto and Ann Arbor, have undertaken a multi-faceted investigation into possible urban futures for the Great Lakes Megaregion of North America. The study is based in the proposition that by investigating interdependent agents, material flows and policies, and by focusing on back of house activities of cities and their support systems - such as infrastructures, logistics and ecologies - architects can conceive new distributed urban architectures that have the potential to actively transform the future of cities, settlement patterns and metropolitan life. Utilising tools of urban analysis and formal intervention, RVTR aim to re-conceptualise future boundaries, governance, politics, economies and public architecture. Infra Eco Logi Urbanism presents comprehensively RVTR’s findings and proposals. Around 100 images, visualisations and graphics illustrate the text. The book also features essays situating the historical development of the region around transportation, and investigating possible future worlds and utopias within the context of the specific project and more broadly the practice of design-research.
AUTHORS: Geoffrey Thun is an Associate Professor at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan, and a founding partner of RVTR. Kathy Velikov is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan, a registered architect and a founding partner of RVTR. Dan McTavish is a Lecturer in Architecture at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan, and a design/research associate at RVTR. Colin Ripley is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Architectural Science at Ryerson University, a registered architect and founding partner of RVTR. Foreword by Robert Fishman, afterword by John McMorrough.
84 colour, 9 b/w illustrations