Fabric - Anders

Fabric

Public and private hierarchies create multi-layered societies, rich with diversity and control. These multi-layering is stitching together an urban fabric. In an event of a war this multi-layered complexity is being reduced to a one-layered structure. During the attempt to restore the fabric of old cities you cannot just replace what has been damage or destroyed. Wood argues that a replacement like that would end in parody. Governments and corporation cannot create new and multi-layered societies, according to Wood these must raise from below. There is of course the importance of time, the embodying of history that must not be denied. Once the patterns have been reduced to one pattern they can’t be restored or renewed in a single step. But an intimate scale of complexity can serve as a breeding ground for a new urban fabric. New additions can be made but there is a need for time to fill in the gaps between the spaces. Today’s cities demands architecture that can handle changing conditions. Architecture that collects its strength from “patterns of unpredictable movement”, “architecture resisting change, even as it flows from it”. If Woods would have ended his text with just a few “architecture that…” But instead he goes on like it was a presidential election. It’s a petty because I believe the “Radical reconstruction” reading is touching a very present subject of how rapidly emergent new cities in Asia is being planned.

In the “Palladio's children” reading Habraken talks about spatial organization as the greatest quality in a field. How they are able to combine coherence and variation. The cultural preference has great influence on the urban fabric. In today’s global society where the cultural preference and building technique is getting unified what will happen to the urban fabric? Will a newly planned urban area in China look just like one in America? Are the variations between cities becoming the buildings instead of the urban fabric?