Forgetting and reconstructing - Memory and experience in the architecture of the city

Abstract

The article discusses the development of today’s cities through the concepts of memory and velocity and through the analysis of how these ‘new and transitory places’ evolve into ‘new and transitory ways’ of articulation between users and spectacular built spaces. It also seeks to explore recent theories and themes thrown against contemporary cities in the debates placed over architecture and society. To do so, we will outline a theoretical study over new characters printed on the physical dimension of space and deal with their implications in daily life. It does not discuss the physical space as the total amount of material devices in which architectural plans appear, but as a “totalized”, phenomenological space that may be filled with social and sensorial relations linked to the perception of environmental phenomena. In this way, the authors want to discuss the dynamic and collective nature of “emerging” physical spaces and buildings through new interferences developed by association or disassociation between architecture and users. The conclusions show the necessary existence of this kind of space for the management of today’s cities and enable the process of summarizing in which ways fickleness (of spaces and people) has enhanced the modification of social identities in the contemporary context.

Keywords: memory, identity, contemporary, velocity.