Urban fabric- Digging inside ot it

Jungmi Won

N.J. Habraken examined urban fabric at the aspect of social memory and transformation of the city. With this article, I came up with a question about the eye view seeing urban fabric. In spite that he dealt with transforming issue of city, is it valuable or even possible to think a city as an urban fabric itself? When we think our face, fabric of our face is only a tissue covering bone structure. One’s appearance is already decided in the level of bone figure. Then, if urban fabric makes a character or impression of a city, don’t we have to focus on its structure, energy flow or inner layer than fabric to scrutinize its route of transform?

Ram Koolhass said that ‘Not only are large of its surface occupied by architectural mutations, utopian fragments and irrational phenomena, but in addition each block is covered with several layers of phantom architecture in the form of past occupancies…’ e in his book, Delirious NY. He saw NY as a city covered with fabric expressing desires.
Urban fabric is a subject that we can approach in terms of transformation and it is the main figure of city. But, I cannot shake off a thought it is a superficial approach without level of somewhat software. It’s because I keep thinking the radical transforming of city like Lebbeus. ‘In the spaces voided by deconstruction, new structure can be injected. Complete in themselves, they do not fit exactly into the voids, but exist as spaces within spaces, making no attempt to reconcile the gaps between what is new and old, between two radically different system of spatial order and thought.’ (2page, Radical reconstruction)

Also, with this phrase, ‘Healing is not illusory, cosmetic process, but something that-by articulating difference-both deeply divides and joins together’. I come up with a sentence ‘The professionals of the city are like chess players who lose to computers…We have to imagine 1,001 other concepts of city; we have to take insane risk; we have to dare to be utterly uncritical; we have to swallow deeply and bestow forgiveness left and right. (P971, What ever happened to Urbanism?)

What we see in the city is how we pursue. I wish urban fabric can be accepted as a result not a phenomenon.