Events

Memory Palaces: A Different City Guide

Istanbul Kültür University Ataköy Campus
Istanbul Kültür University, Faculty of Architecture, Architecture Department

Memory Palace or the mnemonics were used frequently in Antiquity and Middle Ages as a recall or data classification technique. With this technique concepts (image, writing, symbol and objects) in physical locations could be associated with eachother and in this way remembered. The city has never lost his place as a memory palace. The state’s power, religion’s sanctity and capital’s force are being reproduced and normalized by the structures we encounter everyday. The images we see come together to create a whole story. We see these, these do exist and happen by themselves: So, these are real and this is how the world operates.

Yet, according to Ulus Baker, “reality is not acquired, is not at hand, is something still being produced” and, according to Lefebvre, space is always produced. In historical sense, the space is formed according to the power relations that create it and we encounter different spaces in different contexts. In this sense, here it was explored, how we can create “a different city guide” for Istanbul, barring what we see in municipality magazins, tourist maps, newspaper headlines or on the screens in metrobuses.