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	next				INFRASTRUCTURE SPINE SCOTT LLOYD + ROOM 11 + KATRINA STOLL Research for IP2100 focused on the concept of urban metabolism and attempted to define the spatial consequences of the stocks and flows of the contemporary urban condition. The spatial needs of contemporary cities and their supporting infrastructures stretch far beyond traditional city, territorial and national borders. New cultural practices are formed in these expanding contexts, allowing projects from terra-forming infrastructures to open-source design systems to grace the anthologies of architectural strategy and expression. This ventures architecture deeper into the cultural politics of collective space and artefact and confronts the previously subconscious systems that sustain urbanity. These infrastructures form thick contexts that ensures they are never isolated systems, never closed artifices prescribing limited agendas over a natural systems or supposed pristine contexts. The landscapes in which the spine operates are allocations tied into the very arrangements and sustaining urbanism. At the same time the spine allows for real anchor points, offering, perhaps, a meta-construct into the very real mechanics sustaining civilisation. This was done in the past by a rigid curation of meaning in the form of spaces and symbols provided by the materially analogue city. The spine is initially a prosthesis. fulfilling a role as a synthetic stabiliser, while acting out the the big game of cultural yearning through its form. In this sense it has a real and immediate function to play out.		- IP2100 www.ip2100.info - ROOM11 www.room11.com.au - RAIA Now and When 2010