The Triggered Memory: Understanding Perception Through Architecture

Abstract

This thesis explores the concept of the triggered memory and its role in shaping subjective perceptions of the world. It is defined as an act of recollection; memory of a time past triggered unexpectedly, surfacing from the depths of the mind to project into present space. If architecture is the cause, the triggered memory is its effect. The imaginative dweller is able to be situated in two places at once, to be here and elsewhere, perceiving the world through the physicality and virtuality of space. Here memory and imagination extend spatial experience beyond bodily encounters, enabling architecture to transcend its very walls. Through the proposal of the living gallery, designed for the works of five contemporary artists, the concept of the triggered memory finds architectural form. The living gallery is for the imaginative dweller, curious and open to discovery, a dialogue of shaping perception, through architecture and art. A journey awaits, where memories are impressed upon the mind, then archived, only to surface at a later time. Through a series of dual constructs, an initial space presents itself, at first unassuming in significance. Only once the secondary space is encountered elsewhere along the journey, that association to the initial space is made. This is the triggered memory at work. As past memory and present encounter exchange, a compounding experience occurs. And as the imaginative dweller reflects, situated in the join between, one's perception of the encountered space defines the architectural experience. Without such an external prompting, without projection towards another, our memories remain forever internalized and obscured. As Merleau-Ponty wrote of the paintings of Cézanne, the task of architecture is “...to make visible how the world touches us...” (Pallasmaa, 2005, p.129). This thesis serves as an existential endeavour, demonstrating the potential of memory, imagination and perception within architecture in shaping of the human spirit.