Rita Pinto de Freitas: Hybrid architecture and infrastructure

Quaderns #262
code: 26218

Hybrid architecture defines as hybrid all architectural intervention that is at once object, landscape and infrastructure.

Hybrid architecture, pushed by the fact that it concentrates in a single architectural intervention a triple object-, landscape- and infrastructure-related nature, generates architectural answers with very specific features, which widen the conceptual framework of topics that are transversal and consubstantial to architecture.

All architectural intervention is defined as hybrid that is at once object, landscape and infrastructure, an architectural intervention that simultaneously meets three conditions:

_It is a physical intervention that, as a result of a project, proposes an architectural space generated on the basis of human intervention.

_It is an architectural intervention, which is at the same time a landscape: the architectural intervention integrates inseparably into the landscape.

_It is at once an architectural intervention and an infrastructure: in transforming into a section of infrastructure itself, the architectural intervention incorporates part of its laws.

The fact that the architectural object incorporates the infrastructural nature into its own implies the precondition that this object becomes an integral part of an infrastructural system of higher order.

At the same time that it possesses the autonomy characteristic of all architectural objects, a hybrid is also a section of infrastructure integrated in a wider infrastructural system —conceived to absorb flows of circulation— with its own laws and functioning.

The mobility becomes a core quality of the architectural intervention with significant consequences concerning the spatial configuration:

_As far as the programmatic dimension is concerned, spaces of circulation integrate into the realm of the primary spaces as part of the core programme and occupy a greater proportion of the surface relative to the entire available surface.

_As far as the order system is concerned, the fact that the hybrid object belongs to an infrastructural system of a superior order will result in the necessary incorporation of part of the laws defining this infrastructural system as an ordering system into the genesis of the hybrid.

_As far as the condition of limit is concerned, the indispensable condition of physical continuity between the physical area defining the project and the infrastructural system to which it belongs, leads to the disappearance of the concept of limit associated with that of border in light of the emergence of its definition as space of transition.