City Fabric

Using construction safety netting artist Rebecca Bayer and artist/architect Matthew Soules created a large-scale installation directly above Vancouver’s seawall.

City Fabric, a large-scale installation by Rebecca Bayer and Matthew Soules located on Vancouver’s Burrard Bridge, directly above the seawall, is made up of construction safety netting, a material designed for temporary use that has become iconic in Vancouver – a city that since the 1980s has been under intensive real estate speculation and development.

Rebecca Bayer and Matthew Soules, City Fabric, Vancouver, Canada

Typically used to protect passersby from construction hazards, ten sections of the netting (amounting to 240 lineal  meters) have been stretched between the concrete piers of the Burrard Street Bridge. City Fabric cherishes the temporary permanence of construction debris netting; beautiful, impoverished for its utilitarian use, yet profoundly normal. The project explores the role of vestigial space within urban environments, the formal properties of fabric in juxtaposition with structural concrete, and the often-unnoticed material properties of transience in the late capitalist city.

Rebecca Bayer and Matthew Soules, <i>City Fabric</i>, Vancouver, Canada
Rebecca Bayer and Matthew Soules, <i>City Fabric</i>, Vancouver, Canada
Rebecca Bayer and Matthew Soules, <i>City Fabric</i>, Vancouver, Canada. Axonometrical view
Rebecca Bayer and Matthew Soules, <i>City Fabric</i>, Vancouver, Canada. Siteplan


until September 30, 2015
City Fabric
Artists and design team: Rebecca Bayer, Cam Koroluk, Heba Maleki, Matthew Soules
Structural Engineering: Stantec
Fabrication & Installation: Great Northern Way Scene Shop
Commissioned by: 221A, Burrard Arts Foundation
Curator: Brian McBay (221A)
Vancouver, Canada