If These Walls Could Walk: Architecture as a Deformative Scenography of the Past

Abstract

Historical architecture is often considered as a picturesque but lifeless scene, abandoned by the original actors. Such an approach however focuses too narrowly on historical buildings as a static, passive form of memory. In this essay, it is argued that architecture itself should be regarded as an actor that engages with the other human actors in the performance of memory. Four types of ‘performers’ of architectural memory spaces are discussed: the shaman, the orator, the flâneur and finally, the modernist architect. In their interactive performance, the past inevitably gets deformed, but this deformance is not a misinterpretation that should be corrected, but a continuous spatial becoming that turns the memory inscribed in our buildings into an active, provocative force. Such an approach not only focuses on the actual building and the period of its construction, but also takes into account the virtual images, the untimely fantasies it evokes in the present, as a force field that allows older ways of dwelling to be remembered in a radically other context. This deformative scenography of the past allows us to link the architectural remembrance to current problems, which can be both personal and collective, and to explore new solutions for the future.