Quaderni di Venezia Arti

“Meditations on the Sense of Erasures”: Berlin as a Mnemotope in the Architectural Projects of Oswald Mathias Ungers and John Hejduk

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Abstract

A mnemotope can be described as a territory or location that exists simultaneously in the physical world and in the realm of collective memory. A mnemotope, according to our hypothesis, can be used as a theoretical construct to study the influence of collective and personal memory, inextricably linked to a particular space, on architectural projects created for its territory. Using as examples two architectural projects created for the city of Berlin, in this article we argue that within the space of a mnemotope architecture can interact with, and be highly influenced by, urban areas of prior destruction.


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Submitted: Oct. 15, 2025 | Published Dec. 15, 2025 | Language: en

Keywords Collective memory • John Hejduk • Oswald Mathias Ungers • Mnemotope • Berlin as a Green Archipelago • Berlin

Copyright © 2025 Taisiya Zakharova. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.


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