Collective Behaviors: Memory and Morphology

In Architecture of the City , Aldo Rossi describes a definitive characteristic of the city and it's collective memory through 'genius loci' and 'locus'; urban artifacts and its surroundings (Rossi, 1982). Layers of collective memories and urban artifacts reference historical events and present spatial consequences of current individualities. Urban memories implant singular nodal moments in time while the collective identities are distributions of disparate artifacts emerging and transforming as urban contextualized spatial agents. Resembling the work of Lebbeus Woods in Sarajevo's conflicted past (Woods, 1996) , artifacts of architectural memory provide clues on how the shaping of our future cities can be observed as a combination of historical events imprinting traces on a fluctuating urban terrain.  Evolutionary processes within collective form allows for morphological engagements to be implemented as new radical strategies for urban growth. Initially borrowed from Fumihiko Maki's 'group-form' generative elements (Maki 1964), Thom Mayne's interpretation of the city is described as a 'constellation of polynucleated attractors'. The Post-Modern city 'is not the production of platonic solids but rather multiple and overlapping forces of a highly complex and entirely uncertain collective form' (Mayne 2011). Where do these moments of urban morphological processes and collective memory merge within the fast-paced 21 st century of tomorrow? This paper attempts to uncover signs of intrinsic collective memory and morphology as latent potentials within our increasingly complex contemporary urban fabric.