The seen, the unseen, and the aesthetics of infrastructure

Abstract

Work narratives haunt the architecture of our shared built environment, urging me to visualize the humanity attached to materials that define space and use. Unregulated, human labor markets are deeply embedded into necessary components of contemporary global, societal infrastructures. This relationship plays itself out in plain sight, and yet can be silent. I imaginatively liken laboring bodies to the inner workings of the built environment; bodies, like pipes, are put to use in an underground that is equally seen/unseen literally as well as figuratively. Domestic laborers on the street, buried pipes, underground. There are visual, sonic, physical, and linguistic relationships between informal domestic labor and material infrastructure. Functional sounds of informal labor and physical infrastructure are often similarly muffled. Frameworks of material and informal labor are described by beneficiaries as necessary for economic sustainability. Physical infrastructure is tangible and ephemeral, awash with images of labor, fragmented. Labor and the built environment are infused with subdued narratives of work and love as they facilitate the daily exchange of goods, services, and currency in any functioning society. This thesis explores these relationships, examining the aesthetics of infrastructure through observation, study, and artistic production.