AHSE1170 Infrastructure Studies
We live our lives embedded in systems that help take care of many of our basic needs, as well as some that are not so basic: warmth (or cooling), clean water, hygiene, and communications. At the same time, these systems provide the technological context for our engineering work. But we rarely notice infrastructure until something goes wrong. In this course, we'll investigate the systems that surround us, including water, sewage, electricity, telecommunications, transport, and more. We'll start thinking more broadly about infrastructure, asking questions like "what makes a system 'infrastructure', and why?". To do this, we'll draw from a wide range of fields and materials, from scholarly essays to videogames. And we'll consider our collective future: how might we make infrastructural systems more sustainable, resilient, and equitable? By the end of the semester, you will have a new awareness and understanding of these systems that underpin our lives and engineering work, and you will have the opportunity to document and share your own exploration of these systems.
Hours
4-0-8