Publication: Urban Palimpsests: Memory, Transformation, and Erasure in the Layered City
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Type
Thesis
Degree
BA
Date
2025
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Published Version
Abstract
This thesis examines the city as a palimpsest: a metaphor in which urban fabric is shaped by the layered accumulation of construction, loss, memory, and adaptation over time. Rather than viewing the city as a clean slate, it examines how spatial traces persist, conflict, and shape contemporary meaning. Drawing from theorists such as Corboz, Lefebvre, and Huyssen, the work explores how architecture interacts with both material remnants and the social narratives they hold.
Through a series of comparative case studies, this research identifies how memory is curated, erased, or commodified in urban contexts. These precedents serve as critical references to understanding the design project site. Görlitz is a border city marked by fragmentation, vacancy, and multifaceted identity. Using diagrammatic and spatial analysis, the thesis maps Görlitz across narrative, physical, and curated orders to expose tensions and relationships between preservation and loss.
The design proposition, through its numerous interventions, explores architectural strategies that activate memory and aim for reinterpretation rather than replication. In doing so, it echoes Piranesi's Campo Marzio, in its attempt to spatialize intertwined temporalities where physical and symbolic layers coexist in tension and harmony. Thus, architecture becomes a means of navigating memory, recontextualizing the urban palimpsest as a critical framework for engaging with complexity, absence, and change.