This book is a sub-urbanist manifesto. Its author, Sébastien Marot, challenges the dominant role of the programme in regulating the design project, and argues that instead attention should be redirected towards the site – the site read in depth, with an active regard for memory. Exploring this analysis, he considers in turn Frances Yates’ book The Art of Memory, Sigmund Freud’s analogy between the past of a city and the workings of memory, Robert Smithson’s account of a tour of his suburban birthplace and Georges Descombes’ design for a small park in the Geneva suburb where he spent his childhood. Marot’s conclusion brings these different strands together and highlights, in memory, a precept that is essential to the renewal of current architecture.
To mark the publication of a new edition of the book by AA Publications this year, Sébastien Marot will be joined in the AA Lecture Hall by Iris Hansen and guests for a discussion chaired by Maria Shéhérazade Giudici.
