The construction of memory: Architecture and the city

Abstract

This text examines the role of memory as a creative foundation of architecture and the city, understood not as a mere evocation of the past but as an active, selective, and transformative process. Drawing on the reflections of Aldo Rossi, Maurice Halbwachs, Aby Warburg, and Michel de Certeau, it explores the notion of collective memory as it relates to places, monuments, and urban form, as well as its tension with history understood as a chronological narrative. The study addresses the concept of damnatio memoriae as applied to post-war Europe, analysing different strategies of reconstruction and reinterpretation of the past in Italian architecture, from Neorealism to Neoliberty. It further investigates the “work of quotation” (A. Compagnon) as a creative mechanism in three projects by Le Corbusier—the Villa Favre-Jacot, the Chapel of Notre-Dame de Ronchamp, and the Convent of Saint-Marie de la Tourette—in which immediate and remote memories are transformed into new spatial configurations. Finally, the text explores the domestic dimension of memory, understanding the house as a vital repository of experiences, objects, and meanings, where architecture, biography, and imagination are intertwined. Memory thus emerges as an essential material of the architectural project, capable of articulating past and present through an active construction of meaning.