What is "outfrastructure?"

When you hear the word infrastructure, you may think of roads, bridges, airports, and the like—the built environment that links our homes, stores, schools, offices, and cities together. But in an urban environment like New York, building envelopes—SUPERSTRUCTURES’ specialty—are infrastructure. We suggest adopting the term outfrastructure to make this relationship more evident.

Why? Because if building envelopes are failing—if you’re cold and wet because there’s no reliable protection from wind and rain—civilization is in trouble.

Roofs can be landscapes, playgrounds, or outdoor rooms. Plazas are often the roofs of below-grade structures. And sidewalk vaults blur the lines between structure and street. SUPERSTRUCTURES employs the same meticulous restoration approach to all of these components, treating building envelopes as interconnected systems with many intersections between vertical and horizontal surfaces.

The root of the word envelope—envelop—connotes a sympathetic relationship between exteriors and buildings as a whole, suggesting a membrane that mediates between indoor and outdoor space. We see the building envelope as a continuum, tied into a larger, urban fabric—or outfrastructure, if you will.