Losing Site ─ Architecture, Memory and Place

Through case-studies and careful analysis, Hornstein (architecture history and visual culture, York U.) explores in seven chapters the relationships between architecture, memory and place. Specifically, she's interested in illuminating the connection between the architecture of the imaginary worlds of our memories and physical sites. She also brings attention to how physical sites support our memories and what happens to those memories when sites become destroyed or are otherwise inaccessible. Many of her case-studies are about examples of Jewish memory, such as the Jewish Museum and Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, and her study of post-cards from Israel as formative of national identity. She also considers what it means to build on a site whose meaning is tied to specific geography in the case of a monument built to Walter Benjamin in a relatively inaccessible part of Spain. In one chapter she asks how the architecture of museums shapes our cultural memory "when the idea of cultural production is tied to global cultural tourism." She ends with chapter on the Internet and its impact on our memories and experience of place, with some attention given to Google Earth, web-tourism and The Man Who Swam Into History by Robert Rosenstone. Each chapter contains at least one or two black-and-white photos. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Shelley Hornstein is Associate Professor of Architectural History and Visual Culture at York University, Canada