Introduction The things we build shape the identity of our cities, but it would be hubris to assume that the buck stops there. Any piece of architecture lies in the hands of the designer for a minute period in relation to the amount of time it lies in the hands of its owners or its users. The identity of our built environment is surely influenced by the objects we place in it, but that identity is built on the way users handle those objects given them over time. So what is identity relative to architecture? What is the role of change in relation to identity and how does memory function to facilitate or hinder identity? Do the urban centers, the parks, the hinterland, and the suburbs solely define our cities? Or is there more at work? Or can a city be potentially devoid of an architecture or architects? In Against Architecture: The Writings of Georges Bataille, Denis Hollier argues that Bataille, “…denounces architecture as a prison warden….Architecture is society’s authorized superego: there is no architecture that is not the Commendatore’s.” Bataille writes: “Architecture is the expression of every society’s very being…. Thus great monuments rise up… Church and State in the form of cathedrals and palaces speak to the multitudes,
or silence them. It is obvious that monuments inspire social good behavior in societies and often even real fear. The storming of the Bastille is symbolic of this state of affairs: it is hard to explain this mass movement other than through the people’s animosity against the monuments that are its real masters.” Like Bataille and Hollier, we are against a complicit architecture authorized to mold societal behaviors and express its identity. Over time, however, the ability for architecture to impose and express becomes more complex. Architecture can mold behavior and identity in the sense of absolute power, but we are seeking form(s) that can translate and transform into spatial/ aesthetic conditions that speak to formerly invisible histories through the democracy of personal invention and the everyday object. The architect’s ultimate act is that of letting go, freeing a design from their own control. As designers, we must begin to fully understand and address this evolution “post-occupancy” to recognize our place within the larger process of shaping the identity of our built environment. The following analytical project serves as an investigation into these questions and as a response that could stipulate a point of departure and possibly creation, for something organizational, spatial – a not-quite architecture/landscape.