Collective Memory and Place Identity as guidelines for Urban Renewal

Abstract

The goal of this text, which is nothing more than an articulation of the preoccupation on how to responsibly conceive of an architectural intervention, is to lay the foundation for a framework, a process for how to tackle an architectural brief. The infatuation with collective memory and place identity stems from an intuition of what qualities define a successful or interesting space. Seeming as the environment is a result of previous actions, it is intuited that whatever it is that defines a place is a result of the past, a historical notion, and hence the interest in preservation. The development of this interest leads to an exploration of several texts that delve into context as a generality, dealing with specific ideas of regionalism, the experiential (phenomenology), the political and economic paradigm (governmentality) and, with it, the actors (stakeholders) that influence the change in the environment.