Consolidated periphery : commercial and highway interchange

Abstract

Highway expansion legislation has been a significant catalyst for suburban development. Initially funded for military mobilization in the 1930s , later massively extended in the 1950s, today's highway system, together with the service and information based economy of postindustrial development, have allowed for the dispersion of traditionally urban functions into continuously less urbanized peripheries. As the ambiguous zone between city and country is inhabited, suburbia emerges. Commercial, industrial and residential development take hold at new highway interchanges, bringing to suburbia the functions and amenities of a city, yet in a manner completely unique to its own position. In suburbia the landscape consists of sprawling fields of independent, privately-held capsules. "Centers " and "edges" are trivialized, if even discernible. Nondescript "architecture" is governed by economic and marketing strategies, subsidizing the making of space to the making of corporate identity. While the highway system itself i s enabled through massive public investment, its "archi tecture" -- the strip -- is entirely private in its motivation. This thesis proposes that the rational of the suburban strip landscape can be challenged through the insertion of generic private development into public infrastructure. Through the design of a commercial strip within a highway interchange it obviates tensions inherent in the suburban condition. The thesis implicates archi tecture as both a physical and conceptual mediator; it is the material interface between highway and town, and the ideological interface between public space and private enterprise.