Remembrance and the Design of Place

We all retain memories of places. They simultaneously help to identify who weare as individuals and tie us to networks of people culture and society.Certain pla... » 

We all retain memories of places. They simultaneously help to identify who weare as individuals and tie us to networks of people culture and society.Certain places reach into the past reflecting lives and experiences as real asour own while also pointing to future lives and circumstances we can onlyimagine.As a designer Frances Downing has searched for ways to express or explain whyimages of place were meaningful to her work. The connections are interwoven andcomplex. Subconsciously designers often transcend personal experiences byusing them to imagine other people and places to discover something new andsurprising and to deepen concepts. In this book Downing suggests a method toregularize the memory of personal experience and translate the memories of pastand existing places to the design of new ones.Through her investigation of the act of remembering Downing has discoveredthree different acts of expression naming remembered places contemplatingtheir meaning and putting them in meaningful categories. Through a combinationof emotional response to a place and the reasoning that categorizationrequires designers can work to understand the significance of a particularplace both its objective characteristics and its emotionally chargedconstructs which are the most difficult to clarify and express.To aid designers in following the steps she has identified Downing introducesthe game of Spatial Solitaire in which a person can use a memorable image ofpast place in a limited design situation and she includes as examples a numberof the completed drawings and descriptions that have resulted from designersgames.Downing also discussessignificant forms of experiences and how they relate toarchitectural practice the content of metaphors of experience intentionalframeworks for the transfer of meaning and case studies and theories ofimagination and innovation.Remembrance and the Design of Place provides des «