DomusAir: Digital Connections – Going beyond physical infrastructure

The new edition of DomusAir is now available and offers readers a journey through a breadth of infrastructures ranging from New York to Doha. This is the fifth issue of the editorial project published by Editoriale Domus, together with Scientific Direction by One Works.

“Infrastructures show that life acquires meaning only if it is free to circulate and express itself. Beyond the themes and languages that define its core business by responding to its community of readers, we work so that DomusAir can continue to redefine a new vision, dismantle stereotypes, and offer useful tools to use time and space in a new world” explains Walter Mariotti, Editorial Director of Domus and curator of DomusAir.

In this latest issue, we talk with: Stefano De Capitani, President of Municipia, as he illustrates a new vision for urban centres where people’s use of time and space is augmented; the Mayor of Ghent, Mathias De Clercq, about how they have combined healthtech, biotech, cleantech and digital innovation, to create a pioneering community become the first hi-tech centre in Europe; and John R. Williams, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT, on how Internet of Things data helps make better decisions.

We also explore some of the world’s most ambitious infrastructure projects that are leading the way in combining the physical and the digital with three detailed case studies:

• UNStudio’s new Doha Metro Network. An urban project designed to create public spaces that enhance the urban experience at pedestrian scale and build new habits for the Doha community;
• HOK and WSP’s LaGuardia Airport’s new Terminal B. A complex expansion of the main terminal through two pedestrian bridges that have been designed to reflects the soul and the conformation of the city. A soul that is also highly technological; and
• Mecanoo’s Urban Mobility in 2040 project, as they explore innovations in public transport that will offer an increasing range of choices for getting from door to door, depending on our situation and the purpose of our journey

Giulio De Carli, Co-founder and Managing Partner of One Works, and Scientific Director of DomusAir also concludes with an editorial on the need more collaboration between public and private, and clear vision for the road ahead. “It takes an extraordinary commitment to training to build an ecosystem in step with the acceleration of demand and availability of new technologies. We need to work on research and training even more targeted at school and we need more training and qualification both in companies and in the public, with up-skilling and re-skilling paths consistent with the goals that new technologies already make available. And we need more collaboration between public and private, to raise the bar of requirements and induce the elimination of compromises that undermine the adequacy of the response provided by the projects”.

Aviation, connection, infrastructure, and digital relationships are the essence of DomusAir magazine that for more than two years has been offering an unprecedented and exclusive analysis on the movement of people and goods. As instruments of exchange, dialogue, economic, social and cultural growth.

The issue is attached to Domus di July, the seventh monograph edited by guest editor Jean Nouvel that this month further questions the role, and opportunities, of contemporary architecture.