In her book “Losing Site: Architecture, Memory and Place”, Hornstein aims to ‘explore the relationship between memory and place, and ways in which architecture captures and triggers memory.’ (p.1). What immediately felt relevant to me was a question the author proposes on page 2. She asks what happens when the place in which a memory was formed is demolished. This makes me think about the renovation of buildings. What happens when the place in which a memory was formed is renovated into something completely different? Do the memories of building 16 post-1916 when it was owned by the Women’s Political Association still exist in some collective memory, even though the building has undergone an entire re-design? Perhaps that is why the brick wall I am so intrigued by has been left alone.
Hornstein outlines that her book argues two main points:
1. Architecture exists as a physical entity and hence a place that we come to remember.
2. Architecture can exist past the physical site in our own recollection of the place, whether or not it still stands today.
According to her, we function with an ‘architecture of the heart’, which contains the emoting memories of a place. This ‘symbolic construction’ connects our idea of a place to its physicality (p. 3). Furthermore, Hornstein suggests that individuals each have an ‘architectural imaginary world’, entirely constructed by memory. This imagined world can be different, parallel and sometimes compatible with physical sites.
In chapter 5, Hornstein writes about how photography has contributed to this imagined world and helped form cultural identities. One can view historic sites all over the world simply by looking at images, thereby building upon there existing ‘architectural imaginary world’.
Certainly while researching Storey Hall, the photographs taken of the building before it was renovated help to form an imagined image of it in the early 1900’s.
