
10 minute read
Act II: current path
01 | pottery [the process of making it and taking away finished piece]
02 | war [entering a space which is chaotic in terms of number of people with uneven/unpredictable ground surface and lighting]
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03 | photography [gallery of historic images of Athens - of a specific theme]
04 | elderly woman [conversation with an elderly member of the community who has stories to tell of being brought up and living in Athens
05 | plant [giving back to the city that we have taken from and reliving our ancestor’s life of growing to feed ourselves - reconnecting with nature]
06 | -
07 | film [showing modern versions of historic stories]
08 | neoclassical architecture [walking through fully renovated house to see how the rich of the city used to live]
09 | ancient execution [an experience about fighting reflexes/ resisting the urge to react]
10 | -
11 | literature [a reading of the first poems and stories created in Athens]
12 | stew [helping a local cook a traditional recipe, and sharing a meal together where conversation of past, present and future Athens can take place]
13 | -
14 | -
15 | linear b clay tablet [using clay to write anything the visitor wishes to]
16 | -
17 | -
18 | -
19 | drama [where the first plays of ancient Athens are translated into modern versions where visitors can take part in if they wish]
20 | -
‘‘The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory’’ - Henri Bergson
M:
S: The image adjacent by Rachel Whiteread shows a plaster model of the negative space left behind from a bookcase. If it were just a bookcase, our minds would accept it as it is and not think much of it, but now it has been removed and something is in its place the mind now has questions. What colours were the book? What were the genres? What were they were about? Who wrote them? Who were they written for?
By translating this method of thinking into architecture and abandoned urban forms, we can take a look at these existing objects and question that now they no longer serve any purpose other than memory, what would happen if we were to remove them? Is there something that can sit in their place but still serve for memory whilst benefitting the community at the same time?
The image below explores the idea of a museum of disappearing buildings, where a large room holds the buildings in ‘urns’ much like a columbarium holds the ashes of people and provides a space for family and friends to visit.
Architecture is becoming much less about the architects and their egos of wanting to design ‘one off’ structures, and truly more about the people - not only in terms of building use and function but also the people’s role in creating the buildings themselves. Taking a step back as space designers and becoming systems builders instead, doing so within a decentralised network.
In a city so rich and full of urban material, there are not many other options other than to work within them instead of completely removing and replacing them - which of course is different from the Brodsky and Utkin example below where they free up the space that the buildings originally sat in. The similarity being however that there is still something in place to respect the history of the building, a place for people to visit to remember. Meaning nothing is lost but rather stored in a different format.

Figure 7: Aleksander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin, The columbarium [museum of disappearing buildings] 1989

M:
S:
N: Collective memory as explored previously, is the idea of shared experiences which in turn creates place and culture. Many of these memories are held in the objects of the city. The buildings, monuments, parks - public spaces and places. Much of Athens contains neoclassical buildings, which was a controlled culture creating device at the time of its introduction23 . These buildings are a representation of the ancient city and the people, but they are being left to ruin, with the memories dying with them and no solution to resolve the decay.
So, a solution is needed. By viewing the buildings as they are - shells serving only as memory with no other function - we can begin to use this to our advantage and really encourage the idea that these buildings are places for holding collective memory, being refilled when necessary. However, instead of the buildings representing one event or one movement, it can reflect the combined experience of locals, old and new.
Perceiving the buildings as memory devices, we can become part of a larger process or system, rather than trying to control it. The evolution of the city is then allowed to be more organic and fluid, and correct for its time, place and people.
‘‘ninenty percent of plants are actually dependant on fungi, that grow within their roots and, often, inside their cells for survival...the fungi actually have a significant role in determining what species of plants can be part of a given community’’ [Skene, 2019]
Viewing buildings in the city as the flowers. Once one has found a way to adapt, it’s pollen can spread and others can begin to heal. The users are the fungi creating the buildings, surviving them, and selecting what type of other functions surround them.
23 [refer to group booklet Ancient Athens p 51]

Figure 9: Terracotta Hydria [water jar] ca. 510-500 BC, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
M: Luigi Moretti’s 1952 article on ‘Structure and Sequences of Spaces’ explores sequences in architecture, focusing on voids or empty inner spaces. Moretti questions the role of this as a locus of experience in architecture. The hollowness allows for places to become what the user chooses, making the experience more about a journey of instinct. In his research, Moretti plays with form, scale and light - investigating how the energy changes and how that can change and inform the experiential environment and journey.
In 1955 French philosopher, Guy Debord, coined the term psychogeography. Debord defined the term as “the study of the
precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals.’’24 . In other words, he was interested in how built space and therefore urban environments affect our psyche, and how it might effect how we navigate the cities we live in. The conscious choice to avoid a street and the other unconscious choice which takes us down another is something which could be strongly related to memory.
Genius Loci refers to the protective spirit of place in Roman Mythology and in contemporary usage of the world refers to a place’s distinctive atmosphere. Architectural phenomenology is a term that evolved from the idea of atmosphere, questioning what creates atmosphere: being the way we as humans experience the built environment through our sense. With reference to the short French film ‘Genius Loci’, Adrienne Merigeau directed a story of a woman who walks around the city and really sees the chaos. This ‘chaos’ is the spirit and energy of place, and it guides her from building to building and street to street. The film is made up of delicate drawings and fluid animations which really capture the energy of the urban environment and truly allows the viewers to be immersed within the visualisation where the woman’s perception becomes tangible.
The ideas above all lead back to one theme; the curation and control of the user’s journey. This is how the sites of collective memory could be connected, creating a new way of reading the city in terms of current day environment and past history, memory. Allowing users to be in control of their journey ensures they not only reflect on past memories but create new ones, influenced by their subconscious.
‘‘architecture, as an artifact of the human environment, regulates natural energy flows and channels the energy accumulated in combustible substances for the benefit of the living beings who inhabit it; and architecture, as organised matters, is subject to permanent deterioration and needs a continuous supply of materials and energy to enable it to reconstruct its form’’.25 [Fernandez-Galiano,
2000]
The quote above introduces the energy of buildings and the cost on the environment to keep them running, which questions why we try? If we let a building live to the age it was destined to live, it would free up space for younger structures that are more suited to their environment to have their place.
24 Guy Debord, ‘introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography’ 1955 25 Fernandez-Galiano. (2000). Fire and memory : on architecture and energy. MIT Press.; The buildings as an exoso matic artifact, a process containing process. p 5

Figure 10: Luigi Moretties sequence of spaces model Figure 12: Psychogeography, The Naked CIty Map [1957]
Figure 11: Luigi Moretti’s analysis/key drawing of Andrea Palladio’s Vicenza Palazzo Thiene
M: The energy of Athens is held deep within its memory. By curating environments where memory can be held and created through sensory experiences, the city can be explored in a new light. From the touch of textiles, to the sound of water dripping, and fires roaring, the imagination is allowed to run wild. Imagination is the key ability of the mind that allows us to remember. A moment cannot be re-imagined or remembered without it and yet we are living in a world full of computer storage that removes the requirement of use of imagination as everything is already there at the click of a mouse.
The aim of architecture and urban design should be about creating spaces that encourage imagination and excitement, especially in a place so rich in hidden memory and as Juhani Pallasmaa said in his book The Thinking Hand, ‘‘ This is not a sentimental
longing for a lost work, but for a world revitalised and re-eroticised by an architecture that makes us experience the world rather than itself’’.26

initial sketch plan of journey in selected abandoned site within the city
26 Juhani Pallasmaa, The Thinking Hand, John Wiley and Sons (West Sussex), 2009, p 133




M: Before we can investigate any further into creating a system of collective memory we should first continue the thought of isolated individual memory to truly try and understand how humans can be triggered by visual cues. The Memory Theatre of Giulio Camillo27 takes the traditional structure of the Amphitheatre and reverses the canonical relationship between audience and performance, Camillo conceived the theatre for a single spectator located on stage.
An ideal architectural structure destined to:
‘‘tener collocati e a ministrar tutti gli umani concetti, tutte le cose che sono in tutto il mondo’’28
Meaning:
‘‘locate and administer all human concepts, everything which exists in the whole world’’29
He described his theatre as a ‘’mens fenestrata’’ meaning a ‘‘mind
endowed with windows‘‘, and viewed it as a structure providing the possibility of looking inside the human mind’’30 . In this case the visualisation was much more literal but less adaptable when compared to the memory wheels explored on page 25. Windows, or places, rooms and therefore spaces for memories is not restricted to this reference. Robert Fludd, as mentioned previously was another who was interested in the storage of memory, including and elaborating on the museum theatre in his work. Instead of everything being viewed at once, he suggested that the theatre was rather a series of rooms off the central space. Where each thought was accessed one at a time - which is probably more true to how the mind actually works.
In a way both Camillo and Fludd’s memory theatres are more relatable in comparison to the wheels as viewers of the drawing can really imagine themselves alone on the stage or in the room looking back up at physical places of information which they have collected, or towards the openings which draw them in.
27 italian philosopher, best known for his memory theatre 28 https://socks-studio.com/2019/03/03/spatializing-knowledge-giulio-camillos-theatre-of-memory-1519-1544/ 29 lbid. 30 lbid

Figure 13: Giulio Camillo’s Memory Theatre [1519]

Figure 14:Robert Fludd’s Memory Theatre [1619]