This past week, Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin wrote a post on his blog The Skyline titled, Goodbye, icons; hello, infrastructure: Obama inaugurates a new era of architecture. In it, Kamin discusses how the economic crisis is helping to supplant, swiftly and boldly, the era of "starchitects" and mega-projects with a new age of infrastructure.
He is right on two fronts – that a debate around what type of infrastructure projects the economic stimulus plan should fund is happening at all, after a dozen boom years of icon architecture, is significant, but that the real issue is whether we have the foresight to fund projects that set new, better patterns for urban growth rather than reinforce suburban sprawl. President Obama has talked often about the audacity of hope over the last two years. We hope that Obama, his team and Congress have the audacity to seize this opportunity they have to change the way American communities live, work and play. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is a good start, but needs to do more to support long-term design and planning processes that determine whether we continue to sink or swim toward sustainability. We do need to create jobs – trust us, we in the building sector understand – but we also need to plan smartly before patting ourselves on the back for finally paying attention to a long-neglected national infrastructure problem. Real Transformatione applaud Obama’s embrace of public works – after all, he did dream of being an architect before becoming President – but we also hope, like Kamin, that his infrastructure investments will be as dramatically transformative for the American landscape as the recession has been for architecture.