Memories

During the first lockdown in spring 2020, the idea of a hiking sketchbook followed by an exhibition on the topic "Architecture and Memory" came up. Around 70 architects' offices in Munich and Hamburg were invited to participate and immortalize themselves in the book with a sketch. The two sketchbooks wandered through the offices for more than a year and are now being shown in parallel as an exhibition in the Munich Architecture Gallery in the BUNKER and in the AIT Architecture Salon in Hamburg.

We brought back memories with architects; traced their references, the anchor and starting points for new ideas, for innovative but perhaps never realized designs or realized buildings. What are the references that influence your current work, which building or concept has strongly influenced or continues to inspire your own architectural attitude? Architects are repeatedly confronted with these questions in their creative process. In our work, we all unconsciously fall back on a pool of images, experiences and feelings that we have collected over the years and preserved in our memories. Some of these are consciously stored references - perhaps even recorded as photographs or sketches - our favorite places, urban spaces, buildings or architectural details that we always like to remember and that influence us. For the most part, however, it is unconscious memories that shape us and our work.

In addition to expressing individual memory, architecture often plays the role of preserving and expressing global and collective memories. In the context of historical events, it plays an important role in the culture of remembrance - be it as a place where history is manifested or as a monument that reminds of the past. Dominik Reding reflected on these and other aspects of remembrance and architecture in his leading article on the subject.