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Lost in Plain Sight: Investigating the Influenced Value of Memory in the Built Environment

Part 2 Dissertation 2024
Fiona Wylie
University of Strathclyde | UK
Cities are made up of a spectrum of cultural identities, experiences, and connections, all of which are carried through the memories of people. Architecture acts as a mnemonic device, fostering a relationship between our memories, our identity, and place, yet the value of memory is often overlooked or rewritten in city planning and architectural design. By reading cities through their hidden traces of memories, as opposed to official monuments of memory, this dissertation investigates how the built environment is tasked with being keepers of memories, while being influenced by the evolving social, cultural, and political agendas of its surroundings.

Due to its history of using demolition to combat a plight of social struggles, Glasgow is used as a working model to compare its wounded relationship to memories in the built environment to those of other cities. Glasgow’s traces of memory are compared to those of Sarajevo, Cassiar, Berlin, Nicosia, and Vienna, under the memory themes of Revival, Industry, Ghosts, Scars, and Contribution, respectively. The study explores the sociological value of memories, examines the built environment’s involvement in remembering, investigates the influence of politics on memory, both collective and individual, and finds value in commonly overlooked spaces of memory.

Fiona Wylie

Tutor(s)
Derek Hill
2024
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