Energy Futures: Between Infrastructure and Public Space

Fall 2015 Grant Recipient

Graduate Student

Tom Bliska (Architecture) This grant funding will allow for critical diagramming and comparative graphic analysis between Tokyo and Charlottesville, exploring the friction between energy infrastructures (particularly power transmission lines) and experience of public space. Building on my previous research re-situating spaces of electrical transmission in Albemarle County to the public domain, this project engages with hybrid infrastructural spaces in a city rapidly pushing redevelopment in the lead in to the 2020 Olympics, and draw lessons of co-habitation with and resilience of energy infrastructures. I will use drawings to explore distinctions between formalized transects and informally layered distribution systems, and how this distinction can inform a new understanding of energy landscapes in rural conditions.