12 March, 2013

Rebuilding Violent Places: Sandy Hook Elementary and Utoya Island : The New Yorker

Rebuilding Violent Places: Sandy Hook Elementary and Utoya Island : The New Yorker: Architecture has a special relationship to memory. And to disaster. The memory palace, that celebrated mnemonic device wherein Roman orators remembered passages from speeches by visualizing themselves walking through corresponding passageways in imaginary buildings, has its legendary origin in the story of a sole survivor retracing his steps through a recollected dinner party, in order to recover the bodies of friends buried by a catastrophic roof collapse.