Symposium ‘Ghost Writers: Collectors, Creators, Archives, and Memory’

Design practice depends heavily on display of drawings or photographs – representations of buildings and landscapes – from architecture schools to competitions and from client meetings to the final publicity of a completed project. Archives and other records of memory serve an essential role in architectural creation as well in that designing a real building, one that stands solidly, is attractive, and functions – in fulfillment of the Vitruvian triad – is a complex process and having access to as many sources as possible of how other architects handled these questions is fundamental to the overall process and design and the ongoing education of an architect. While designers are always looking for their next commission, their antennae are also open to interesting projects, whenever they were built. The exhibition “The Living City: Park Systems from Lausanne to Los Angeles” displays works that come from archival collections and are assembled with the intention to open and influence discussion about landscape issues still of great importance. Exhibitions about historical architecture and surviving documents that represent or interpret those works speak to an essential part of the architectural consciousness. Indeed most architects have an internal archive of buildings seen or experienced that are fundamental to their understanding of what a building is for them.