Mono-functional infrastructures have wreaked havoc on the city during much of the twentieth century. Limited-access highways, dedicated power transmissions, and rail corridors have penetrated cities, with social and spatial connectivity suffering as a result. While autonomy and efficiency have improved, the destruction of traditional urban fabric to make way for these massive structures has resulted in a loss of connection and a proliferation of unused urban space.
This project is specifically concerned with the creation of marginalized space on the edges of highways and other infrastructure that is hardly maintained, much less inhabited. This project proceeds by accepting the mono-functional regional infrastructure as a deeply ingrained (albeit, ostensibly negative) force, and by focusing on the remaining interstitial space. These ‘lost spaces’ are the empty, ill-defined remnants of the twentieth century model of separating functions, modes, and speeds. These marginalized spaces lie within the city, but operate well outside of the city’s normal urban functions. They are void of oversight, and of sustained activity and occupation.
The dominant view holds that these spaces are the centers of unacceptable socio-economic deterioration and should be returned to ‘productive’ use as soon as possible. However, when a conversion to constructive, profitable use is impossible, these places are mentally erased. They are hidden in plain view.
The goal of this thesis is to reverse this avoidance of lost space and to provide literal and metaphorical access. It seeks to highlight both the freedom and the disruption that are inherent to these places.
Specifically, this project investigates a section of riverbank in Covington, Kentucky, which has been isolated by three massive infrastructure systems: The Brent Spence Interstate Bridge, the C & O Railroad Bridge, and an earthen flood levee. The project invites the user to explore this marginal space and experience both its liberating informality, and its murky disorder. It neither fully romanticizes the space, nor fully condemns it. This thesis seeks to successfully mediate between the scale of the existing infrastructure and that of the human body and to simultaneously open the space to the normal urban system, while preserving its standing as ‘lost space.’