[RE]Visualize the Voids

Abstract

A common theme that is starting to occur across America in a majority of the post-industrial cities is the depopulation within the urban core of the city. The effect of this depopulated core is a torn up urban fabric. The remaining shreds of the fabric survive because they can supply specific needs and wants that are still demand. The rips are tears are the places in between these destinations; they are the voids. The overwhelming abundance of voids create a sense of placelessness; not only between the void and the city but the city and society. These fragmented shreds are being encompassed and overpowered by the rips and tears proving the irrelevance of proximity to the survival of a contemporary city. The mobility of today’s society has created a space of discontinuous flows. An appropriate phrase to describe the city which was once a ‘space of place’ has become a ‘space of flows’ focused on our ability to move in between the places. No wonder the residents are packing up and leaving, who wants to live in a city of flows? How can architecture design stem away from the quantitative formulas and reconsider the qualitative expressions?