The point is not that architects should design infrastructure - transit, sewage distribution and treatment, water processing plants and delivery, storm drainage, power generation and distribution, phone sytems, and the like - it is that these things should be designed in the context of habitable and sustainable urban concentrations designed by architects. Rather than infrastructure setting the pattern for development, its form should follow the function of cities as nurturing, sustainable, safe, and convenient habitat. Engineers tend to solve problems in engineering terms rather than human ones centered on livablity. They only work to get the sewage from point a to b in the most efficient and economical way, devil take the hindmost. If we archies lack the grit to make this point again and again at the level of National and as a standard for best practices, we'll continue to be forced to design in the wake of this or that engineering solution, making at best cotton purses out of pigs ears.
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Gary Collins AIA
Principal
Gary R. Collins, AIA
Jacksonville OR
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