To both Calvino and Sebald, the development of their work is a promulgation that describes the intersection point between memory and architecture. Their corresponding output is that memory is seldom an important aspect in utilizing the contagious imaginary levied to architecture. In the architectural worldview, memory is taken to mean the collective and autobiographical variables which occur as an integral for one another and whose existence forms the basics of defining what meaning could be built upon.
Conventionally, architectural memory and memory of architecture intersects with one another to build up a progressive equilibrium which makes the feasibility of architectural projections. The existence of memory and architecture is an analogical essentiality which is a provision and relationship towards which a meaning is given to living, doing, being and making productive output by users and designers as they engage considerably with one another within scopes of experiences and memories.
Memory being a largely important component to our relationship with the entire world, it has a high importance with which we are able to formulate adequate meanings between spaces and the buildings that human beings often interact with. The aspect of developing architectural meaning begins with a benchmark process of creative practice that helps to organize the past experience, the future desires and the present actives towards a significant outlook at different points in time.
This is to imply that, architecture and memory does not always occur as fixed entities with certain and speculate meanings but are challenged to being flexible to the nature of meaning that they imply in us. (http://meaning. boxwith. com/projects/making-meaning-memory) Memory is what provides a valid conception to us about the architectural world. Various aspects of human experience are synthesized through memory. Memory is what forms our individual identity, which then provides individual cohesion to consequently form social groups.
It is the thread linking towards the current, past and the future. Therefore, memory is what provides a meaningful architecture through a coordinated linkage between its processes. Tentatively, the memory occupied by the architectural environment must be certain of a close correspondence relationship existing between the architectural embodied memory and the memory perceived by the individual person himself. Memory in building / architecture seeks to discover the ultimate relationship of a certain architectural work and the variables of history and time frame.
(Sebalb, Anthea, 2002, 227) Time memory, seeks to internalize the age bracket of a building. This is evident that the worth of a building diminishes with time. Consequently, age is important in transcending what a building goes through in the due process of passing time schedules. It seeks to analyze the state of architectural transformation which a building goes through in its construction narration. (http://meaning. boxwith. com/projects/making-meaning-memory) Apparently therefore, architectural memory is what provides a building relationship to historical respects.
It gauges the type and the style of such a building in correspondence to a changing historical background. Memory seeks to provide architectural works with visible expressions of its current state of relationship with what time has for the field of architecture. Seldom, memory is what brings out the material factuality in physical constructions when we regard them as autonomous objects that exist in place and also in time. Architectural memory is not solely a component of administration of the architectures only but incorporates the precedent of the inhabitants of the people in these buildings.
However, inhabitants use architectural memory in bringing personal history towards building within their physical environment in relation to the variables of autobilographical and individual memories. Consequently, such memory is a tool by the users towards formulating standards of confrontation with the physically built environment. Ideally, it is of a unique importance for the interaction in the memories between the inhabitants and the buildings. (Calvino, 1979, 85) However, the consequent quality towards this relationship requires of memorial validity as explaining the illusionary artifacts held in buildings.
Memory in the relationship between inhabitants and building requires understanding the right context of the relationship, which implies how the two weave together in adjudicating a conscious equilibrium. Accordingly, memory is what describes architectural figures in terms of statements, ideas, and events which can adequately be understood in providing a stable state of appreciation of architectural works. (http://meaning. boxwith. com/projects/making-meaning-memory) Memory is what helps us to interpret adequately the various contexts that define the status of architectural relationships.
It helps us to strike a balanced relationship in the quantitative and the qualitative relationship that define the status of the architectural work. Therefore architectural memory is depended on the ability of practicing adequately the embodied situations underlying in an architectural process. This is aided by an adequate relationship of the architectural work and a time notation. It seeks to relate the relative time projections that individual architectural works were done in relationship to the material technological that existed at such a particular time.
(Sebalb, Anthea, 2002, 291) Every importance should be brought out in describing the prospective meaning that is conceived by building in the memories of the users. To complete the meaning of building however, it requires experiences and memories that explain the cordial rules guiding architectural work. This helps to personify an understanding towards the quality and type of building, which therefore provides an environment of engagement towards understanding the risks and opportunities held within building works.
However, a full knowledge about this can only be evident whenever the architecture’s memory (embodied memory) concurs with the users experiences and memories. Consequently, the correct meaning on architectural work is provided out with its corresponding variables such as history, styles and time of constructions. It is therefore clear that, experience is closely related to memory. When inhabitants gain fountain experience with regard to a certain architectural foundation, such experience is then translated to some temporary images of relatively closely related variables between time and space in architecture.
(http://meaning. boxwith. com/projects/making-meaning-memory) Architectural memory is then super imposed into an analogical thinking that gives intersection into the concepts held by an individual on what holds in an architectural analogy. Analytical thinking (which is a component of memory of architecture) gives an active interpretation into the different figures, layers and shapes of building. Layering figurations in architecture is what presents activities as overlapping images which consequently shifts thus encouraging user reinterpretation and re-evaluation.
However, analogical thinking in architecture should never be held as a simple to understand concept since this is what illuminates the hidden material artifacts that explain architecture. (Calvino, 1979, 116) Summarily therefore, one would question of what importance does memory in architecture hold to both the architectures and users of the buildings. However, it is a benchmark process towards illuminating safety in use and developing the buildings. Memory in architecture is the component of knowledge that helps a person to understand the meaning and the variable options held in the architectural biography.
This knowledge permits a process of culminating safety and optimal use with which architectural work can have for the general community comprised both of the users and architectures.
Work cited
Calvano Italo. Invisible Cities. Pan Books, ISBN: 0330257315, 1979, pp. 85, 116 Making Meaning Out of the Memory of Architecture. Retrieved on 7th May 2008 from http://meaning. boxwith. com/projects/making-meaning-memory Sebalb Winfred & Anthea Bell. Austerlitz. Modern Library, 2002, pp. 227, 291