Date of Award
Spring 5-30-2020
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA)
Department
Landscape Architecture
First Advisor
Elizabeth Dean Hermann
Second Advisor
Tiago Campos
Abstract
Urban landscapes can be envisaged as a palimpsest of historical layers, some of which have disappeared while others remain active in constituting contemporary identities.
Yet memory is tricky and one’s memory can be false, distorted or erased consciously or unconsciously from brain. Like history, some memories can be lost, while others others might be retained and continue to influence the present.
This thesis explores memory as active construction. Construction and reconstruction are ongoing and as layered and nuanced as the history itself. Moreover, memory is both personal and collective. It is shared, appropriated, and reassigned depending on whose personal filter is determining value or elimination. The thesis uses the idea of palimpsest, a term suggesting the wearing away of a surface to expose previous realities and presences in a collage of focus, diffusion, collision and superimposition. By engaging the new media Augmented Reality (AR), the shield of the present and the individual can be dropped long enough to allow history and memory to accumulate, interact and shared beyond, the single viewer and moment of physical encounter.
Recommended Citation
Sun, Xinyi, "Urban palimpsest: re-placing memory in war torn city Dresden" (2020). Masters Theses. 591.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/591
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