I really enjoyed Paul Gough’s talk in class, and I feel like I took a lot of inspiration from it to consider the intention behind my individual project. Paul’s speciality is to do with memorialisation, and specifically places of memorial such as the Shrine of Remembrance, and how their design reflects what is being memorialised as well as how.

He talked about Cenotaphs, again like the one that stands in the Shrine of Remembrance, and how they act as a focal point for grief. He also noted that the walls or lists of names that are usually placed on or near these cenotaphs act as an index of collective memory, and ultimately become the point of reverence for the site of memorial.

He also talked about the life cycle of memorials, it’s creation as a place of public memory, the institutionalised date that is set for it – such as ANZAC day – and the reverence shown by not only the generation directly affected by the event being memorialised, but by following generations of children and grandchildren.

His ideas resonated with me and I feel like that my project of mapping out Building 20 directly relate to these ideas of memory, and cenotaphs; Building 20 stands quite proudly on the corner of two busy streets of Melbourne, and has done for decades, and so acts as a focal point of memory for the city.