| Once a symbol of technology and innovation, freeway infrastructure has matured into a hyper concrete network -- neither a place, nor a destination for the city dweller, and dominated by the privileged utilitarianism of the automobile. The ambition of Innovations of the Generic is to redefine the existing standardization of the freeway and the monoculture it yields, engaging the diverse population and city it serves rather than disregarding its urban implications in lieu of the automobile.;Los Angeles, California is the quintessential infrastructure city whose preference for mobility and freedoms has generated a terrain of autopic excess. Located within this vast interstate network is Interstate 710 - built in the 1960's to federal interstate standards but never completed, leaving a five mile gap between downtown LA and downtown Pasadena. Sited within this incomplete portion, this thesis breaks the freeway's generic solidity, encouraging both city and suburb to occupy a more permeable freeway territory. |
