Stones that speak: exploring public engagement with Chinese Memorials
Creators: name: Zhu, Jie
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 330109
subject: Landscape architecture
classificationCode: 330199
subject: Architecture not elsewhere classified

description: It is common to encounter public memorials in cities. They occupy many kinds of urban zones, including parks, plazas, neighbourhoods, and commercial areas; Also, their various forms allow them at different places in these lands, such as pavement, building walls, bridges, and sidestreets. The importance of public memorials is also embodied by their value to society, culture and economy. As a result, public memorials have been the focus of scholars from history, urban planning, archaeology, and sociology. Although there is a large amount of research concerning public memorials, most draw upon three aspects: value, meaning, and commemoration. There is insufficient research to explore the daily activities at public memorials. Hence, this research focuses on people's daily activities at memorials, aiming to discover factors that contribute to memorials' engageability – the ability of memorials to attract people to engage with memorials sensorily and physically. 

Why is it important to know daily uses at public memorials except for commemorations such as anniversary ceremonies? Admittedly, commemoration is the basic function of memorials; however, daily uses have also become common in public memorials. Next, scholars pointed out that public memorials have changed from individual objects to spaces. They are places for people to stay, play, and use. Therefore, knowing how people engage with public memorials contributes to knowing how to serve people's needs balanced with commemorative function. Thirdly, daily uses at public memorials contribute to people building a connection to them, keeping the historical memory alive. A few research demonstrated that the place that could maintain people's memory is where people have daily and social activities. Hence, exploring people's daily uses at public memorials benefits their vibrancy in people's minds. 

This research utilizes the case study to explore factors beneficial to public memorials' engageability. Through the lens of public space and memorial objects, it analysed six cases of Chongqing, selected from 46 cases based on their forms and locations. The exploration of the engageability of public memorials centres on the following five aspects: (1) the physical relations to cities; (2) memorials' management, safety and security; (3) physical attributes and activities of memorials; (4) sensory stimuli of memorials; (5) identity and meaning of memorials. In order to collect corresponding data, this research primarily uses fieldwork as the primary data source supplemented by medial social pictures and archival documents. For each case, at least two visits are assigned; one is during weekdays, and another one is during weekdays. The fieldwork takes interval recording to record people's behaviour at public memorials through videos and pictures as well as notes. Plus, the investigator writes down six senses of public memorials using sensory notations during the fieldwork. Next, the raw data is further processed by coding and mapping, primarily qualitative methods, to uncover the five aspects that influence public memorials' engageability. Through comparison and summarization, the research across six cases concluded that factors promoted daily engagement and revealed how these factors influence daily engagement.