Lisa Robertson’s Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture (2006) is a rich set of poetic essays, détourned manifestos, and prose poems that eludes generic classification. Occasional Work examines the ability of urban architecture to extend beyond the spatial boundaries that separate subjects from their surrounding environments. Robertson expresses this transgression of limits through three main tropes: fabric, translucency, and delirium. She uses these tropes to describe the tenor of urbanity and to explore history, memory, and various aesthetic traditions. Robertson demonstrates that this convergence is analogous to the layers of memory that cityscapes deconstruct, excavate, and build upon ad infinitum.
