Transcending memory: remembrance and the design of place ?
We all retain memories of places. They identify who we are as individuals. At the same time, they tie us to networks of people, culture and society. Even through time they reach into the past to people whose lives and experiences were as real as ours, and into the future to those whose lives we can only imagine. Our ability to transcend our own experiences, by using them to imagine other people and places, discover something new and surprising, and deepen a thought demonstrates the power and potential that remembrance holds for us as we create future places. If we are to design, and teach others to design, places that are memorable and support a meaningful existence, we must first understand the essence and content that makes a place memorable and how to transfer this content as we design. When we, as architectural designers, understand how memorable experiences translate into meaningful inquiry and design strategies, it points us toward fruitful conjectures and comparisons and helps us develop a broad range of conceivable avenues to pursue and evaluate. We complete a meaningful design cycle by not only prying our remembered past loose from its content, but also by imagining the future through referring to that past.
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