Multistable Infrastructure: The Scripted and Unscripted Performance of a Functionalist Pathway

A mundane asphalt surface traverses a traffic-segregated functionalist suburb, with a fixed cross-section of bike path-median divider-footpath. As a product of modernity’s civilising march into the territory of infrastructure, this pathway is scripted for transport. In turn, it has been neutralised as a technical utility line through the script. But inevitably, the pathway participates in shared conditions, as it is inhabited lengthwise and crosswise through transport, embodied mobilities, social encounters, recreational activities, cultural events, and resistances. It is a composite, heterogeneous, and localised infrastructure, entangled with the district’s daily life.
This chapter tunes into the scripted and unscripted performance of this functionalist pathway through the concept of multistability. Developed from the interdisciplinary approach of ‘mobilities design’ in order to learn about infrastructure as networked architecture, this chapter advances with the concept of multistability, so as to render the pathway visible, particularise and de-neutralise it, and learn about the paradoxical looseness of infrastructure.