Dealing With Decay, Admire Or Fix?

Infrastructure is not quite as hot a topic as going green in the US these days. But green solutions closely involve infrastructure, maintaining what we have and creating only what we really need.

Industrial Decay is a photoblog showcasing buildings and infrastructure falling apart. The photography is beautiful to appreciate but also show a neglected sadness.

Schemata Architecture Office of Tokyo may be on to something. They just completed an interesting renovation of an apartment block in the suburb of Sayama. The architects employed a process of selected alteration, stripping some surfaces bare and leaving other elements like the kitchens as is. The result is clean and modern but the soul of the building remains. More images at dezeen.

Finally, Architect Magazine wondered how $1.6 Trillion (the predicted deficit for necessary infrastructure upgrades over the next five years) could be spent. They asked a host of architects, politicians, educators, and even the director of the League of American Bicyclists. Many opinions are realistic and well informed. Some are a bit more out there like Andrei Codrescu, the author of New Orleans, Mon Amour.

Commuter vans and clean-fuel motorbikes, hydrofoils, bicycles, and canoes should be freely available at stations run by the National Park Service. There should be hitchhiking shelters equipped with showers and beds at all the stations.
Within every municipality there should be a tax-exempt 24-hour zone where everything is legal: drugs, sex, and music.
Following this immediate infrastructural change, emanating at the national level and integrated locally, we should mobilize a huge national will to make teleportation available to everyone.