Infrastructure Plus

by Chuanying(Channing) Zheng (MLA AP ’19) and Maoran Sun (MAUD/MDes Technology ’20)

This design is reidentifying the meaning of infrastructure and envisions a new version of infrastructure towards the urban environment. This design expresses that infrastructure can not only increase the connection for city mobility but also for social living as well. Infrastructure Plus is a design that breaks segregation, creates connections and combines with different programs that together form a more sociable, sustainable and livable community.

The site is located at Overtown, Miami. Overtown is divided by highway I-95 and I-395’s intersection to three parts. These internal segregation leads to public life’s fragmentation and community’s lack of identity. To bring the community together, a new type of infrastructure is introduced into Overtown. This “Infrastructure Plus” design system combines housing, recreation, retail and other public programs to create public pathways and spaces that are connecting different area as well as providing public center for the whole community. Formally, this new infrastructure breaks the segregation that made by the autonomy of highway intersection. The continuity of the shape implies the existing infrastructure as well as creating the new networks that connect to different neighborhood areas. Different entrances at local school, youth center, sports field, supermarket and as well as a beautiful water landscape inside highway intersection that make this infrastructure not only accessible to the whole community but also bind different programs together. This new infrastructure provides public space for all kinds of using functions, as well as reinforcing and increasing the public life and living quality for local people. In Conclusion, with the idea of this Infrastructure Plus, more programs and public space will be brought to the area, this new infrastructure can show our vision for a denser, more sociable and well-connected Overtown.