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catenation of small, temporally disjunctive perceptual steps.
In order to form a total impression, we must retain what we
have seen a moment earlier, i.e. after turning our heads in a
different direction to take in a fresh impression.
In traversing a room, a town or a landscape, we acquire
a mental presentation of the whole only by recollecting suf-
ficiently the rooms or zones through which we have passed,
and how these relate to one another. We automatically con-
struct a complete mental image in relation to which we ori-
ent the coordination of various memories. This memory im-
age then allows us to find our way. But it may also reveal
discrepancies, as when the parts of a building – i.e. exterior
and interior – cannot be reconciled with one another, whether
through deficiencies or with dramaturgical intention.
Memorability, however, requires more than the visual
impression alone. For certain situations, our memory is ori-
ented more towards bodily experience, simply because a spe-
cific movement – those associated with ascending a staircase,
grasping a handrail, or opening a heavy door – have been
imprinted in memory incisively as a > figure of movement.
An individual’s personal lifestyle and habits are reflected
in the reshaping of the architectural design of his or her living
space as a kind of imprint of daily behaviour. They are pri-
marily legible in everyday furnishings, but also leave perma-
nent identifying traces in the architectural substance as well.
Because we link actions and events to places and spaces and
anchor these in memory (as practised in antiquity through
mnemonics), we are able to summon them to memory when
re-entering these places, bringing them to life again or regis-
tering transformations.
Memory plays a role on another temporal scale as well,
i.e. when we read architecture as a testimony of history, a func-
tion to which it is suited like virtually no other medium. This
function is concentrated in the > monument, but not only there.
As forms of collective memory, and by virtue of their perma-
nence and stability, architecture and the city first of all sup-