The Experience of Memory

The first entry... [Bare with me]... This is all very exciting!

-

An experiment in finding my own architectural and personal position(s).

It all began with an obsession with the idea of space and/or place that is moulded by its users. Dance studios clad with zinc; copper ballustrades; the door handle; the push pad - all literal representations of the idea of the traceable habitation of place through the use of materials that will react over time depending on touch, or the 'handshake with the building'.

Richeal Whiteread; Aldo Rossi; Carlos Scarpa; Gareth Fisher; and Louise Beorgouis to name but a few of those whose work would come to alter my direction for the past 18 months. Their own beliefs in detail, position, making, archiving, drawing and mapping provoked and altered mine: experiments with casting and sculpture became an excersice in designing an exhibition piece which in turn informed the rationalistion of the design of a Community Arts Centre in the city centre of Edinburgh, culminating in a series of designed exhibits of work with common threads. This, however, was to be merely the beginning.

Moving on has never been a case of "moving on": merely another investigation, another direction or a different position surrounding a common theme of tracing habitation and the narrative of life.


How can we appropriatly design for the future without understanding our past? Aldo Rossi notes that "...it is the skeleton which bears the imprints of the actions that have shaped a city".
His words have become so ingrained in the way I consider that they have set up a new project: the documentation of a ruined estate on the outskirts of Edinburgh. Watch this space...