Architecture like an art of the oblivion. Giorgio Agamben’s lectio about the memory

Insān (إنسان), human being in Arabic, shares the same root as the verb nasiya (نسي), which means to forget. The human being is ontologically the one who forgets. At the centre of this issue of ADH is the experience of losing and finding oneself within memory to continue to be. Within the set of habits that guarantee the continuity of culture and memory itself, lie the constructive traditions and compositional rules of architectural forms through which the past — never concluded in architectural experience — is brought into the present. The parts are synchronically present in the architecture that carries out the task of connecting them without entirely losing their specific characteristics. The design process itself is not perfectly linear. Every drawing is a progressive verification of choices: moving from the plan to the section to correct the plan once again. Every decision tests the previous ones and can lead towards different directions. Memories separated from the material that once constituted their origin (ruins, remnants of cities torn apart by wars...) are destined for new combinations (architecture of spolia, reuse, recycling...), in an open field. The attempt to bestow upon them a presumed unity (difficult to achieve, lost, or never existed) characterizes works that reveal coexisting stratifications of eras and languages. The text suggests considering Agamben’s lectio on memory not as a database to be preserved and drawn from, but as the presence of the past in our being in the world. This is illuminating for understanding how designers, historians, restorers, and urban planners can overcome the approach of absolute and shortsighted preservation of 'cultural property' as finished objects separated from daily life, confined to leisure or tourist use, and set within a detached time.