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This family of kerbs is comprised of five prototypes exhibited at “What is Ornament?” at the Lisbon Architecture Triennale (2019) and the Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (UABB) (2019-2020). These kerbs question this light infrastructure through the lens of driverless cars to open a discussion about the demarcation of two spaces: the roadway and the sidewalk. The prototypes interrogate the geometry and materiality of this simple item. They are iterations of an object borrowed from the legislative city manuals of Sydney and Shenzhen respectively, and they are a reinterpretation of one of the city’s most characteristic materials: terrazzo and granite.
Kerbs are more than a material assemblage. They also include the social entities that they represent. The prototypes aim to understand how these ordinary objects participate in city politics exploring the ways that kerbs resignify facts in the public sphere. Kerbs are essential to unfold urban discussions around water collection, pedestrian safety, accessibility, temporary usage or infrastructural maintenance among others. Yet kerbs are not just objects of political deliberation, they are participants in shifting political assemblages. Seemingly mundane objects, their crucial involvement in the city’s infrastructure changes on the arrival of driverless cars to illustrate the powerful role they play in the negotiation of cohabitation between human and non-human entities.
These five prototypes are the first post-human infrastructure. Their future deployment in everyday scenarios will generate a public awareness of the socio-technical controversies that surround driverless technologies. They render visible the differences between human and machine vision through variations in their geometry, materiality, finish and texture: (1) a rounded profile in pink terrazzo with pyrite incrustations; (2) a triangular profile in black terrazzo with volcanic aggregates ; (3) a standard profile cut in a generic light grey granite with a referential pattern and a natural finish ; (4) a stepped profile carved in decadent pink marble with informative engravings and a rustic finish; and (5) an iconic extra rounded profile shaped in a deep black polished stone with a representational pattern in its section. These five objects form the first family of new kerbs. However, this project is not about kerbs. Rather, it is about objectivity, trust, safety, surveillance, automation, real estate, legislation, water collection, geology, pollution, urbanization and beauty. Kerbs turn the street into both a laboratory and a political arena to negotiate the sociotechnical controversies around driverless technologies.
Sydney Kerbs: A project by Guillermo Fernández-Abascal and Urtzi Grau in collaboration with Huguet.
Shenzhen Kerbs: A project by Guillermo Fernández-Abascal, Urtzi Grau, James Melsom and Ke Song.
