Cities are complex urban systems that constantly develop and change. We live in a time where the relationship between private, public and infrastructure is rapidly changing. What opportunities exist at their intersection? How can we imagine hybridised typologies that radicalise our lives and create sustainable environments? The development of many brownfield sites across Sydney has led, in many instances, to seemingly bland environments with an arguably distinct lack of originality or relevance to the city as a whole. These precincts have been developed through a masterplan, often undertaken with a limited view of potentials, singular in their character, or often too fixed to allow them to evolve. They lead to the inevitable; a ‘sim city’ of segregated programs and limited utopian ingredients.
The Infrastructure for Change studio proposed that the development of the White Bay terminal precinct might begin with a project rather than a masterplan—that a project of hybrid infrastructure might instigate and frame the site’s development, proposing new and exciting ways of life and daily activities for residents and visitors. As a non-hierarchical think tank, this studio revealed the layered multitude of issues of the context. Students were challenged to develop a ‘pitch’ for a piece of catalytic infrastructure that reframed the future of the site.
