Friday, December 4, 2009

Urban Fragments

URBAN FRAGMENTS and the CYCLE OF CITIES





Fragments of decay of the urban environment are intriguing bits of evidence of city life. Sometimes it’s a wall; skin peeling like a swimmer’s the day after a bad burn.

Sometimes it’s an orphaned element of space or structure,
lonely, abandoned, and lacking a functional purpose.


Often artful and seldom boring, these fragments of decay tell, if we pay attention, stories of long vanished places and events,

those things that make up the soul of a city. They are pieces within pieces within pieces that spiral inward and outward, telling the tales of a dynamic city life.

We live in cities and they dwell within us.

All too often we use them up leaving behind the fragments of a society outdated.


But, as fast as we use them up, we create new trends, new spaces, new structures, new stories and ultimately, new places. We resurrect the urbs from the places we only recently laid to waste,

accepting and rejecting their history as it suits our purpose. We build them, fragment by fragment, incomprehensible and incoherent pieces joined one to another until, suddenly, they begin to make some sort of intuitive sense. We delight in their creation, play with them and in them a while until we become bored and leave them to decay and fragment again until, one day, the urge to create strikes hot and bright once again.

This is the cycle of the living city.

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