Notes from the Municipal Archives

by Yonathan Raz Portugali
Project by Sonja Dickow, Naomi Niddam, Hadar Porat and Alexandra Topaz

“[In the story], the narrator reads the building records of his childhood home … However, his research in the Municipality’s virtual archives reveals no trace of his existence. …

Our architectonic model translates the structure of memory with spatial means. In the maze-like building of open and overlapping spaces, one can choose many different paths among and across the different levels. The connected levels generate a notion of spatial emergence rather than a disconnection.

The voids in the floor/ceiling draw attention to new creations allow by absence. Looking down from different heights and angles varying overlapping spaces, create different shapes. The remarked presence of an individual point of view transforms the walker into a designer. Writing the history of a family house relies on the way of reading memories. The play between forgetfulness and remembrance appears in new stories of re-memory.”

Hebrew University of Jerusalem