ABSTRACT

This paper explores how the uneven distribution of light and darkness in the vertical city conditions residents’ capacities to form meaningful attachments to the places in which they dwell. Drawing on ethnographic material collected on a recent high-rise development in London, the paper explores how residentsilluminate their homes in improvisatory engagement with the basic infrastructures that support their domestic lives and with the wider urban context. Four biographic vignettes reveal how people alter, adapt to or overturn the inadequacies of domestic infrastructures to carve out intimate spaces of inhabitation. The paper advances the idea of “light infrastructure” as a conceptual proposition for attending to the affective, esthetic and performative compositions of infrastructures in the night, and as an analytical proposition for developing a more hopeful and inclusive outlook on the ways people come to dwell, inhabit and feel at home in the vertical city at night.

摘要

本文探讨了垂直城市中光与暗的不均匀分布如何影响居民对他们所居住的地方形成有意义的依恋的能力。该论文利用在伦敦最近的高层建筑开发中收集的人种学资料，探讨了居民如何通过即兴参与支持其家庭生活的基本基础设施和更广泛的城市环境来照亮他们的家园。四个传记小插曲揭示了人们如何改变、适应或推翻国内基础设施的不足之处，以开辟私密的居住空间。本文提出了“灯光基础设施”的概念，作为关注夜间基础设施的情感、审美和表演组成的概念命题，