Strained + Spliced

Abstract

A woven piece is composed of a warp and a weft. The warp is the portion that is taut and the weft is the portion that is interwoven with the warp. As the fi nal woven piece ages, some sections of it could become strained, and may not function as well as the entire piece. One can remove this strained section of the woven piece and replace it with new sections of unstrained material. This idea can be metaphorically applied to the urban fabric of a city at a variety of scales. At the small scale of the urban fabric this metaphor has a relationship to the materials that are used to construct the buildings in a city. There are large amounts of materials that are taken to waste sites without having the opportunity to be used. Some abandoned buildings have materials that are still suitable for re-use, but are forgotten and never re-used. Buildings are made up of materials that are woven together to function as one inhabitable place. Old strained materials from these abandoned buildings could be removed and replaced with new functioning materials to create a place that can once again become full of life. This then has a positive effect on the communities surrounding these buildings, which then leads to a positive effect at the larger scale of the urban fabric, the city. Every city can be seen as a rich tapestry consisting of many different programs, building types, transportation routes, people, communities, and vacancies intertwined together. Sometimes there are strains and tears in sections of the fabric that offer an opportunity for a patch or a suture. These new sections could be new programs inserted into different re-usable spaces or buildings,transformations of abandoned buildings, or re-use of local materials to create a more viable city. Through the re-use of space and the re-making of that space the fabric of the city could be mended incrementally,one small section at a time. This exploration will focus on the forgotten areas of the city and the possibilities that the re-use of these spaces can provide for the urban fabric. “Weaving creates surfaces and volumes by the regular interlacing of pliable strands… No material is completely inert, and under pressure from the environment, all materials deform. When deformed, many materials are elastic; they retain some memory of their prior state and will strain toward their original plane unless restrained." -James Timberlake