Atlas of Places

FOR A TECHNO-AESTHETIC

Infrastructures bring comfort to living spaces. It is urgent to challenge the division (and the divide) between architecture and infrastructure. In order to dissect the notion of infrastructure, one could introduce some of Gilbert Simondon’s concepts, such as individuation, transduction, metastability and key points, listing among the latter antennas and telephone exchanges. These objects, that in Simondon’s view are both technical and aesthetic, organize the territory. They create key points embedded in the landscape. In a synergetic alliance of technical patterns and natural powers, the new grid establishes privileged places in the world generating a novel form of genius loci. For Simondon, the technical object acquires its aesthetic capabilities against the background of a vaster reality. Types of energy crossing nodes, these key points confer aesthetic meaning to topography. In the building of a network, such points are placed in the middle, between things; they form a “milieu”. While examining the question in a geographical (and a topographical) context, one has to redraw a map between design, technology and landscape.