Fluid spaces in a contemporary urban context: Questioning the boundary between architecture and infrastructure

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to research the relations between the contemporary networked context and transformations in the understanding of architectural and infrastructural spaces, and to research the main models of fluidity within this relation. The contemporary urban context is characterized by globalization, transculturalism and increased technological development, which simultaneously change the everydayness, usage and perception of urban spaces and architecture. New networking phenomena occurring on informational, communicational and spatial levels transform the city and its architecture into constant processes of flows. Fluidity is positioned as the main problem of this research, simultaneously causing, and manifesting in, transformations of contemporary spatial conditions where the notion of flow becomes the new spatial quality. This research is focused on one of the main spatial manifestations of the fluidity phenomenon in contemporary cities – the dispersion of the boundary between architectural and infrastructural space. The aim of the paper is to present the idea that fluid spaces are characterized by: 1) increased loss of disciplinary boundaries; 2) loss of physical boundaries – inner-outer space overlapping; 3) dispersion of perceptual boundaries in space. The research is significant because it defines new meanings of spaces of flows and movement in a contemporary urban context.