Crysler's introduction to the section "History/Memory/Tradition" in Sage Handbook of Architectural History argues that discussions of time and space are inseparable and any discussion of time is also a discussion of space. He explores the threads connecting the terms history, memory, tradition to architecture, even as they all appear to have distinct meanings when looked in isolation.
In the physical sciences, the 'arrow of time' refers to the notion that time moves in linear direction, and that the past is distinct and different from the future. What has happened in the past is understood to be irrevocable and unchangeable. In opposition to this, Crysler's essay examines the theory of 'spatial turn' that has emerged in the social sciences and humanities in the last three decades that "denaturalizes time by examining it as a social construction" (290). This theory argues that time and space have to be understood together, and any study of the past is simultaneously a study of imagined spaces. Crysler argues that time as it registers in social process is shaped by the production, organization, and use of space. In this time-space discussion he visualizes four types of 'timezones' -- multiple and contradictory temporalities emerging from the past.
1. Accelerated Time:
1. World City Theorists' Friedman and Sassen: Center and Periphery model/ Command and Control model : As time is moving faster/ is accelerated with globalization (shrinking of the globe) through speedy data transmission, rapid capital/ material/human movement and so on, there is an expansion or reorganization of space through displacement/ gentrification etc.
2. Lefebvre's Production of Space: Spatialization of social theory - social theory of urban society which was looked only through Marxist theory of economic functions was changed by Lefebvre's discourse on space.
3. Edward Soja: Lefebvrian discourse of space challenged 19th century historicism which presented space as a result of evolutionary time (space independently changes with time) or ignored it altogether. Soja argues that time and space are reciprocative -- as space is shaped by capitalism (economy), economy in turn is shaped by urban space.
4. David Harvey: Space is a social process. It is an ideological representation which can influence social change and in turn perception of time.
Copies without origin: When copies (simulations) are made of the past -- through heritage preservations and simulated reconstructions -- time dissolves into a flux where past can be uprooted, deterritorialized, and commodified on a global scale. History disappears or gets obscured through the spectacular visibility of the past -- 'culture of disappearance'.
In theme parks (simulated themed environments) the future dissolves into the present in a degenerate (dilute?) form. Sorkin's example of Disneyland is an example of collapsing of time in space where it becomes impossible to imagine a utopic future outside of these environs.
On an urban scale this can be seen in Rem Koolhas's "futuristic" vision of third world cities like Lagos, Hong Kong, Singapore where third world becomes not something that the first world has to progress from but rather progress towards.
1. Baudrillard (Hyperrealist): capitalist production moved from producing things of use value to exchange value. "Mirror of Production": production of a pervasive and constantly shifting spectacle of consumption that is based on economics of desire that is managed by marketing, advertising experts.
2. Manfredo Tafuri: Production of architecture not for its use value in communication but for its visual currency and consumer capital.
3. Remembered Time:
As time is accelerating, history is disappearing, and memory is multiplying. There is an exponential growth of memory industry through museums, archives, memory studies etc. as a response to faltering legitimacy of progressive history. Memory is a social construction.
1. Pierre Nora: As bounded communities of collective memory disappear, "sites of memory" are needed to preserve the past from being destructed by history.
2. Alois Riegl (Modern Cult of Monuments): Past is made visible as "historical values" through determinations of the present.
3. Maurice Halbwachs: Memory is not intrinsic or given, but rather produced in shared social spaces.
Built environments help in activating, sustaining and modifying memory in three ways:
First, memory production intensifies in periods of rapid social change and is dependent upon on temporality of modernization.
Second, memory is created through specific social situations in the present and are key in establishing power relations.
Third, memory is not discovered by scholars/analysts but rather they are inherently present in artifacts who significance is produced through shared or contested processes.
Recollecting and articulating of memory happens through institutionalized practices often embedded in power struggles between contesting agencies. In such power struggles, memory/artifact is frozen at an opportune moment, and prevented from degenerating over time. "Preservation is not only about stopping time, but also claiming time". The minimum age to be claimed as 'heritage' is decreasing. As history is becoming more accessible, 19th century periodization of history becomes moot and the historic past is no longer the metaphorical foreign country. i.e. preservationists can bring to life the historic past.
Mrinalini Rajagopalan argues, preservation is not a technical process but a social process, as the decision of what has to be preserved precedes how it is done. In Colonial times, the preservations in the colonies was an orientalist representation of indigenous history, culture, and architecture. She argues, waves of modernization trough postcolonial nationalism, globalization have created different ideas of what has to be preserved. Preservation is a result of interchanges between bureaucracies, academia, legalities, and changing epistemologies of architectural history. Preservation becomes a tool to suspend artifacts in time, so that it becomes an origin for future myths in the discourse of market and nation.
In the physical sciences, the 'arrow of time' refers to the notion that time moves in linear direction, and that the past is distinct and different from the future. What has happened in the past is understood to be irrevocable and unchangeable. In opposition to this, Crysler's essay examines the theory of 'spatial turn' that has emerged in the social sciences and humanities in the last three decades that "denaturalizes time by examining it as a social construction" (290). This theory argues that time and space have to be understood together, and any study of the past is simultaneously a study of imagined spaces. Crysler argues that time as it registers in social process is shaped by the production, organization, and use of space. In this time-space discussion he visualizes four types of 'timezones' -- multiple and contradictory temporalities emerging from the past.
1. Accelerated Time:
1. World City Theorists' Friedman and Sassen: Center and Periphery model/ Command and Control model : As time is moving faster/ is accelerated with globalization (shrinking of the globe) through speedy data transmission, rapid capital/ material/human movement and so on, there is an expansion or reorganization of space through displacement/ gentrification etc.
2. Lefebvre's Production of Space: Spatialization of social theory - social theory of urban society which was looked only through Marxist theory of economic functions was changed by Lefebvre's discourse on space.
3. Edward Soja: Lefebvrian discourse of space challenged 19th century historicism which presented space as a result of evolutionary time (space independently changes with time) or ignored it altogether. Soja argues that time and space are reciprocative -- as space is shaped by capitalism (economy), economy in turn is shaped by urban space.
4. David Harvey: Space is a social process. It is an ideological representation which can influence social change and in turn perception of time.
Copies without origin: When copies (simulations) are made of the past -- through heritage preservations and simulated reconstructions -- time dissolves into a flux where past can be uprooted, deterritorialized, and commodified on a global scale. History disappears or gets obscured through the spectacular visibility of the past -- 'culture of disappearance'.
In theme parks (simulated themed environments) the future dissolves into the present in a degenerate (dilute?) form. Sorkin's example of Disneyland is an example of collapsing of time in space where it becomes impossible to imagine a utopic future outside of these environs.
On an urban scale this can be seen in Rem Koolhas's "futuristic" vision of third world cities like Lagos, Hong Kong, Singapore where third world becomes not something that the first world has to progress from but rather progress towards.
1. Baudrillard (Hyperrealist): capitalist production moved from producing things of use value to exchange value. "Mirror of Production": production of a pervasive and constantly shifting spectacle of consumption that is based on economics of desire that is managed by marketing, advertising experts.
2. Manfredo Tafuri: Production of architecture not for its use value in communication but for its visual currency and consumer capital.
3. Remembered Time:
As time is accelerating, history is disappearing, and memory is multiplying. There is an exponential growth of memory industry through museums, archives, memory studies etc. as a response to faltering legitimacy of progressive history. Memory is a social construction.
1. Pierre Nora: As bounded communities of collective memory disappear, "sites of memory" are needed to preserve the past from being destructed by history.
2. Alois Riegl (Modern Cult of Monuments): Past is made visible as "historical values" through determinations of the present.
3. Maurice Halbwachs: Memory is not intrinsic or given, but rather produced in shared social spaces.
Built environments help in activating, sustaining and modifying memory in three ways:
First, memory production intensifies in periods of rapid social change and is dependent upon on temporality of modernization.
Second, memory is created through specific social situations in the present and are key in establishing power relations.
Third, memory is not discovered by scholars/analysts but rather they are inherently present in artifacts who significance is produced through shared or contested processes.
Recollecting and articulating of memory happens through institutionalized practices often embedded in power struggles between contesting agencies. In such power struggles, memory/artifact is frozen at an opportune moment, and prevented from degenerating over time. "Preservation is not only about stopping time, but also claiming time". The minimum age to be claimed as 'heritage' is decreasing. As history is becoming more accessible, 19th century periodization of history becomes moot and the historic past is no longer the metaphorical foreign country. i.e. preservationists can bring to life the historic past.
Mrinalini Rajagopalan argues, preservation is not a technical process but a social process, as the decision of what has to be preserved precedes how it is done. In Colonial times, the preservations in the colonies was an orientalist representation of indigenous history, culture, and architecture. She argues, waves of modernization trough postcolonial nationalism, globalization have created different ideas of what has to be preserved. Preservation is a result of interchanges between bureaucracies, academia, legalities, and changing epistemologies of architectural history. Preservation becomes a tool to suspend artifacts in time, so that it becomes an origin for future myths in the discourse of market and nation.
