Manila Improstructure

Northeastern University, 2015
Area Civic Urban Development Medium Information Visualization Film Type Research

The project investigates and documents the social and creative practices around the electricity grid and the street lighting system of Manila, Philippines. Manila Improstructure examines the pockets of informality inside the formal urban infrastructures that structure our daily lives. Not only in the megacities of the global south, life is characterized by a constant struggle with infrastructure. The electricity grid, logistics and supply chains, telecommunication networks ? every system that is centrally planned and managed from above always requires some level of improvisation and tinkering from below in order to make the system work. These creative appropriations are, however, never part of the official representations of infrastructure; they are marginalized and difficult to observe. There is a misbalance between what we know about formal structures and what we can only infer about its informal practices.

Links

Authors

  • Offenhuber, Dietmar Northeastern University
  • Schechtner, Katja Asian Development Bank, MIT
  • Julia Nebrija City of Manila

Project Partner

TU Vienna, Urban Design Institute Data collection: Anna Giffinger, Antonella Amesberger, Julius Alexander Fink, Konstantin Jagsch, Lisa Jindra, Matthias Dorfstetter, Michael Egger, Michael Wallinger, Sophie Wuerzer; Faculty advisors: Markus Tomaselli, Michael Surböck Video: Antonia Amesberger, Michael Egger, Konstantin Jagsch, Dietmar Offenhuber