Violence, Memory and Architecture. The memory-objectification approach into space of the last century’s violent events

Abstract

Space constitutes a fundamental device in the articulation, reproduction and transformation of the memory. It is certainly difficult to evoke an event without thinking about the place in which it happened. In contemporary history places are built to allude memorable events, to create the illusion of permanence, continuity and durability in the face of the overwhelming passage of time and the inevitable change. The violent confilcts, the wars, the victims and the overwhelmed peoples have been, throughout the last century, the object of conmemoration by means of the construction of symbols and containers of their history. Objectified in the form of monuments, memorials, museums, public spaces and landscapes, the memory needs space. This article examines the different forms of the objectification of intersubjective memory in space, having the violent acts of the last century as their object of conmemoration.