The process of abandonment as it operates in space. . .suggests an initial scattering of abandoned structures, characterized by the occurrence of many small groups of abandoned houses. With the passage of time, this pattern is intensified; the broad scatter is maintained, although the small groups now contain a greater number of structures.
A two stage process is clearly suggested; the initial abandonments occur and later consolidation follows.... It suggests a which resembles the propagation of a plant species or the diffusion of information.
It is essentially a contagious sequence....
. . .[O]nce abandonment has begun it is likely to be very difficult to stop. It may
become almost a selfsustaining process under the force of contagion...
Michael Dear cited in A Plague on Your Houses: How New York Was Burned Down and National Public Health Crumbled by Debora Wallace
My metaform lives inside one of the numerous empty shells of buildings in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The form appears in the middle of the desolate and unfriendly urban landscape,
the remains of the process of urban decay in the neighborhood, altering the perceptual condition of the local space.
The structure that contains the metaform doesn’t disappear behind it but rises to the surface and redefines itself, increasing the strange feeling of exteriority.
The metaform is a sign of existence, change and transformation. It has become a parasitic event, living in a ghost building, evidence of the rough history of the site that is
about to disappear to give place to the new contagion.
This urban intervention is, in Lozano Hemmer's terms, relationship specific. Every building can be seen as a performance envelope already presenting potential events.
The building suspends the unfolding of those events for its own duration.
The metaform doesn’t pretend to be a reflection of reality, but rather a revision. It is an augmentation of urban reality and not a representation of it…