Memory and Architecture

Acknowledgments

| xi Acknowledgments Several of the chapters in this volume were first presented at a conference on Memory and Architecture in the fall of 1998.* I am grateful to all the conference participants, speakers, and moderators, who helped engender a most stimulating debate on the role of memory in architecture. In the process of preparing this anthology, however, the conference became a distant memory , and the book acquired a life of its own—as it should be. As the scope of the book expanded, we added contributions from Eric Sandweiss, Mark Jarzombek, Eleni Bastéa, and V. B. Price. I would like to thank all the authors for their engagement, patience, and support. Of course, you wouldn’t be holding this book in your hands were it not for the careful work of everyone at the University of New Mexico Press, who embraced the project enthusiastically and guided it through the last but crucial publication steps. I am indebted to University of New Mexico Press director, Luther Wilson, for his continual support; to Evelyn Schlatter, David Holtby, Mary Rodarte, and Adam Kane for their editorial care and attention; to the members of the design team for their magic; and to Lynne Bluestein for her quiet friendship and advice on ceramics. As the manuscript began taking shape, several colleagues were instrumental in shaping and refining the whole and the parts, as they provided valuable editorial and publishing advice. I am indebted to Tom Fisher, Mark Forte, Laurie Kain Hart, Mark Jarzombek, Wendy Lochner, Andy Pressman, and Eric Sandweiss. This is not to say, however, that the final work responds to all the comments and questions that are invariably raised when one introduces the subjects of memory and architecture. The authors studied the intersections of memory and architecture in a kaleidoscopic fashion and brought in only those sources that were integral to these particular chapters and points of view. Taken together, this collection offers a cross section of the current research, without attempting to be comprehensive or encyclopedic. We hope that the strong personal voices of the authors will inspire and engender further dialogue and research among our readers, now and later.± Personal, national, and international events have indelibly marked our lives during the last five years. Most notably, the tragic terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, gave rise to an unprecedented outpour of public and private reflection on the intersections of buildings and memory. We have left those discussions outside of this volume , as the book manuscript was conceived and mostly written before the attacks. And sadly, the more recent destruction of both ancient and modern sites in Iraq echoes some of the themes already explored in our papers, even though their focus may lie on different cities and different times. During the book’s gestation period, several of the contributors became new parents. We dedicate this book to our children, wishing them a peaceful world. —Eleni Bastéa, Albuquerque, New Mexico± *The conference took place at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, under the auspices of the West Central Region of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. Despite the “regional” appellation, the open call for papers brought several international submissions, some of which are included in this volume. Eleni Bastéa (then faculty at Washington University) and Gia Daskalakis co-organized the conference, with Bastéa overseeing the paper sessions, and Daskalakis overseeing the design sessions. xii | acknowledgments ...