City Fabric, Burrard St Bridge South at Seawall, Vancouver.  Rebecca Bayer & Matthew Soules, 2015

"City Fabric is a project by Vancouver-based artist Rebecca Bayer and artist/architect Matthew Soules, commissioned with 221A Gallery and Burrard Arts Foundation in cooperation with the City of Vancouver.

The installation 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. 

Typically used to protect passersby from construction hazards, ten sections of the netting (amounting to 800 lineal feet) 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."

(text: Brian McBay, curator 221A Gallery)

221a

BAF

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

Design Boom: 'construction netting gets re-contextualized in city fabric installation'

Digital rendering and project assistance:
Cameron Koruluk

Photography: David Gregory
​
​Commissioned by: 221a, Burrard Arts Foundation, and VIVA Vancouver