My Rooms: a collection of autobiographical memories of residence

University of Patras, School of Engineering, Department of Architecture, Patras

Project idea

The project deals with the conception and creation of a space between real, digital and imaginary. It is an installation, a landscape, a garden, a work of art, a poem, an idea. It is a “home” but not a house. It doesn’t fit into just one category, it’s not defined or limited by the categories and boxes we often want to put architectural works into.

The purpose of this project is for memories, as ancestors of narratives, to become the material for the production of a new space and through experimentation to lead to the reinterpretation of the original rooms.

The main question I ask myself:
How do I reinterpret each memory into an architectural experience?

Project description

The starting point for the design is the records of my memories from the rooms and houses in which I have lived until now, memories from the spaces in which I lived as a child, teenager and young adult.

The project, thus, is autobiographical. Memories are analysed and interpreted as spatial experiences and then transmuted into a new spatial narrative. The narration of memories becomes a means to create spatial experiences and the memories of the past become the key pieces to produce this project. The result is a "memory house" that transcends the physical known realities of the world. An attempt to avoid oblivion.

The spatial narrative unfolds in a general space with a regular organization, in successively arranged square blocks reminiscent of a mutated renaissance garden, which includes fragments of spaces within its structure.

Each room we encounter comes from a different era of my life and has its own special interest in relation to the experience of the space.

The blocks are developed chronologically. Over the years more and more squares are formed on the system, as experiences continue, as memories are created. The surrounding blocks are spaces in waiting, waiting to be formed.

I divide my life into chapters, each represented spatially by a square. The movement within the system directs us in chronological order through the rooms in which I lived. Memories are kept in them.

Although the starting point of this project is my personal memories, i hope that the space produced and the meanings it conveys will touch other people’s personal memories as well.

Experiences such as the fantasy world of a child, adulthood and the change of scale that accompanies it, living alone for the first time, falling in love, being in pain, looking at the moon with nostalgia . . .
I think everyone has a version of these memories inside of them.

Technical information

Memories are on display, like in a museum. They are placed within an overall structure that houses a diversity of fragments within it. By digging each square, we discover the memories lost in the ground. By removing each time the appropriate volume, the route and interior spaces are formed inside the system. Like archaeologists we gradually carve out each level, each memory, each room.