Strange Infrastructure

I have long planned a book on my music playlist. And I’ve posted a few passages in advance in case I don’t live to see the book.

Similarly, my nephew Stefano and I have joked about publishing a coffee table book on strange infrastructure. In case that one never sees the light of day, here are some pieces that have hit my eye. (By the way, Stefano, a constant world traveler, has also been collecting shots of hulking infrastructure from such places as Brazil and Germany. More on that in the book.)

A few caveats. I know book publishers have a thing about publishing content that has already appeared in blogs. As an editor myself for three decades, I get it. You don’t want to publish something that’s already been published. But as the kids say, chillax. This tease is just some eye candy for insfrastructuralists.

And to be sure, I’m no civil engineer (sometimes not even very civil). But I am a walker and I’ve always been curious about the odd pieces of infrastructure sticking up here and there on my walks. These have ranged from the disused air raid sirens of my hometown as a child to the many water-channeling oddities of my later years, and the increasingly prevalent markers of the telecommunications economy, including, the strange house I spied with all its windows boarded up and a small farm of antennas in the yard.

Noticing these oddities has made me think that some system of labeling strange pieces of infrastructure with a bit about their origins and uses would at least satisfy curiosities.

Here goes something …