November 9, 2006

Précis – A Rough Declaration of the Act of Architectural Creation Through the Memoir and the Memory Map

The architect can learn a great lesson in the visceral physicality of walking through topography or place. The pace measures distance in relation to the human body and develops an understanding of elevation as the topography shifts beneath the feet. Over a long enough walk, the ambient light changes overhead and the shadows change shape. Materials of varied textures brush against the skin and emit varied smells. Under the feet these materials produce distinct sounds that rise to mix with the ambient soundscape of the place.

The physical sensuality of place may inform a deep understanding of the moment, but it is not sufficient to place the moment within a greater context. Rather, memories, traces of other perceived experiences, are called upon to bring further understanding to the moment. Thus assuming that space is understood through input gathered by the senses, and it is apparent memory is also essential to that understanding, memory could be considered another sense. Within this framework, a great opportunity for synaesthetic experience, the crossing of senses, is opened to the inhabitant of place in that the physical sensations recall memories of other places, creating a blurred experience of inhabitation that exists between the physicality of the present moment, and the suggestion of a different place.

Historically, there is a long precedent for a “topographical system” of memory that ties it to the physical world. The ancient Greeks proposed the Method of Loci for connecting the structure of thinking to the spatial structure of the world, extending memory into the landscape. The technique “described by Cicero, consists of using a mental image of a city, building, and room as the locations for information to be remembered. Ordered in time and space the information could be remembered by traversing the space of the imagined city in sequence and recovering the stored information. Used to memorize public orations, the technique was taught as part of the art of rhetoric…Through the Method of Loci, the artificial memory could be improved and the whole of the architectural world could be used as a structure for memory.”1 In another Greek text, the Ad C. Herennium, its anonymous author suggests that the best kinds of architecture for the Method of Loci are deserted, solitary, unfrequented buildings, or ruins, and that new combinations of information could be generated by different itineraries through the memory space.2

Clearly, this opens the door for the architect to not merely understand place, but to also find new ways to create it. It is interesting that the Ad C. Herennium suggests ruins as the ideal physical locals for storing memories because they are the remains of an aspect of culture that has lost its value and the history that they carry can only truly be read through archaeological investigation, which itself is often no more than a hypothesis. However ruins are fascinating because they are enigmatic objects that speak more of loss than of memory thus they are able to capture the imagination. To understand them, one must project his own memories upon them because this is, as Nicomedes Suárez-Araúz suggests, “the tendency of our minds to fabricate when confronted with forgetfulness.” 3 He continues, “when we find ourselves unable to remember a particular word, we are compelled to seek out instantly an approximate synonym, metaphor, or metonym to stand for the word…a mental process akin to the basic associative act of poetic writing.” 4

Bachelard writes, “We are never real historians but always true poets,” 5 which implies that the projection of memory onto the physical experience of place writes a semi-fictional narrative that characterizes the experience. The translation of this idea to the creation of architecture then begins with the documentation of the synaesthetic crossing of memory and physical experience. Through drawing, a subjective map of the memory landscape is created through overdrawing the memories projected upon the physical place. With the mindset of a detective, enigmatic clues are uncovered within the subject map and as the clues slowly reveal themselves, a narrative of spatial experience begins to unravel. Through a mastery of the technique of subject memory mapping, beginning with drawings of his own memoirs, the architect learns a new way to exam a site that allows him find fragmentary clues. Yet these fragmentary clues posses an inherent amnesis, “which freed from theories and fictions of official histories, can spur a greater fulfillment of our potential.” To understand place through the clues of physical experience we project our memories and to project into this blurred realm of synaesthetic experiences is also to dream and to create.

1. "Topographic Memory" Bruce Lindsey
2 "Topographic Memory" Bruce Lindsey
3. "Amnesis Art" Nicomedes Suárez-Araúz
4. "Amnesis Art" Nicomedes Suárez-Araúz
5. "The Poetics of Space" Gaston Bachelard