THE ARCHITECTURAL MEMORY OF A CITY
I was looking at old photos of Christchurch last week with a friend, and we were trying to identify and remember what some of the now-demolished buildings were.
I couldn’t remember the names of a few, but I could remember who the architect was! We could both remember an event at, or a visit to, various buildings.
Some buildings are more apt to creating memories than others. The Christchurch Town Hall, for instance, is home to many of our memories: our first rock concert, school choir, graduation…
We all remember our city’s buildings past or present in different ways. Italian Architect Aldo Rossi talked about the importance of a city’s ‘collective memory’ – memories that belong to all of us.
The Christchurch earthquakes destroyed much of our physical architecture, but memories of buildings and spaces remain in our individual and collective memories. One way of helping us retain these is to re-use surviving buildings or encompass retained elements within new developments.
When Dalman Architects transformed the Hotel So into BreakFree on Cashel a few years ago, we had this on our minds. Our clients wanted a smart new makeover of the façade, so we installed vertical louvres on the outside. One side of the louvre was painted bright yellow and the other orange, so the building appears to change colour as we move past it. But the louvres also allow for a view through to the original IRD building façade when looking front on. That brings back memories of the old office building and numerous stories around it.
Inside BreakFree, we incorporated demolition timbers removed from the old AMI Stadium. Back rails from the bench seats were used with the original colours, and seat numbers were kept. For me, this brings back many fond memories of watching cricket with my older brother and mates and rugby with my father-in-law.
Hopefully, other Cantabrians might connect to former buildings and recall their own memories that they can share with others to develop our city’s collective memory further.