Towards the memory theater: The re-presentation of the city in literature and architecture

Abstract

This thesis examines ways in which the re-presentation of the city in literature can serve as a model for the re-presentation of the city in architecture. The vehicle for this investigation is the memory theater, a theater in which the "play" is enacted by the spectator. The "play" is the play of the memory/imagination as it confronts a series of seemingly meaningless abstractions. The experience of reading the city as a text simulates the dynamic of the memory theater. In Ulysses, Joyce employs the memory theater's strategy of role reversal to reconstruct Dublin in the text by forcing the reader into a position of co-authorship. In order to re-present the city, architecture must effect a similar suspension of meaning in formal and spatial terms. I have attempted to create the memory theater as a means of demonstrating through architecture that the city is written by whomever reads it