But it happens whenever a collective memory has a double object, on the one hand, a material reality, a person, a monument, a place in space, and, on the other hand, a symbol, that is to say the spiritual significance which, in the mind of the group, attaches itself and superposes the reality. Suppose the group breaks up.
Some of the members stay in the place, in the presence of the material object, in contact with it. The others leave, carrying with them the image of the object. At the same time the object changes.
The very place it occupies no longer remains the same, because all that surrounds it transforms. It no longer bears the same relations to the different parts of the material world that surrounds it.
— Maurice Halbwachs, La Topographie légendaire, 19411
In the previous chapter we arrived at a rudimentary understanding of the collective memory and the workings of its frameworks. I shall now turn to the specific concept of the spatial framework of memory to see how it ends up as a crystallisation point in the interface between theories concerned with architecture, memory, social life, and cultural forms. The concept, so I suggest, has been veiled by its position as one of the pillars of the collective memory, and this chapter aims at highlighting this particular aspect of the theory.
The linguistic similarity between the spatial, the social, and the temporal framework of memory betrays the fundamental aspects that they share. They are, in essence, mental constructs that each individual sustains in his mind.
1 M Halbwachs, La Topographie légendaire des évangiles en Terre sainte. Étude de mémoire collective, ed. M Jaisson, Quadrige (1941; 1971; rev. 2nd edn, Paris, PUF, 2008), 128–29.
What makes the spatial framework dissimilar from the others is that it is commonly interwoven in an interdependent relationship with a physical dimension. Time and social relations outside of the human mind are not tangible in the same sense as furniture, buildings, or cities. This does not mean, however, that the spatial framework is less conceptual than the others.
In this chapter I will demonstrate the richness, complexity, and consistency of the concept that Halbwachs developed in the three books on memory, arguing for its recognition as a fundamental contribution to a theoretical framework for addressing the intersection of architecture and societal memory.
As will become clear in the next two chapters, architectural thinkers embraced Halbwachs’s thinking on space already in the 1960s, making him one of the most important references for highly influential books that shaped a generation of architects. In this chapter I will reassess the spatial framework in its original context and put it forward as a concept that could, once more, and differently than in Kevin Lynch’s and Aldo Rossi’s studies, benefit studies in architecture and memory. In a similar fashion as their works, however, this study is motivated by a concern for deficient attention to humanistic values in architecture and urban planning.
Because of my emphasis on the concept of the spatial framework of memory as a free-standing theoretical framework, and because of its intended application in concerns of contemporary society, I will make a selection of those elements that contribute to the ambitions. Consequently, other elements will not be treated, for instance some of the phenomenal reflections and some matters primarily of historical interest. Since I deal with only certain aspects of a larger theory, I will, from time to time, jump from one place in a book to another in order to keep the focus on the same aspects, thus reading it in a different order than most readers would. I will discuss each book separately, but occasionally I will let the thinking of another source complement the discussion.
Before we continue, let me emphasise that for Halbwachs the spatial framework of memory refers to the mental conceptualisation that the individual holds of an environment. It is individually based in the cognitive faculty of the brain, but at the same time it represents a unique point of view on the collective spatial framework. It could, but does not need to,
correspond to a physical environment. The mental conception could be imagined or acquired from fictive places in books or films. The spatial framework of memory, thus, does not denote material buildings or landscapes, but refers to a notion that may stand in a relation to them.
Selected parts of the physical environment of a group play important roles for their spatial framework of memory, entering into a dependence of reciprocal influence. Halbwachs’s use of language, like when he refers to
‘spatial framework’ but leaves out ‘memory’, may sometimes give the impression that it equals the built environment that the individual moves in or perceives. In my understanding, he does not use ‘spatial framework (of memory)’ to refer to the built environment; it is when he uses terms like
‘material frameworks’ (‘cadres matériels’) that he explicitly refers to the organisation or the perception of the physical environment.2 In Halbwachs’s theory the material environment can be considered the physical counterpart to the spatial framework of memory in the same way that the living members are the counterparts to the concept the individual has of social relations in the social framework of memory. In chapter five, as an extension of Halbwachs’s reasoning, and with the support of Aleida and Jan Assmann’s theories, I will propose to regard the material framework as a spatial framework of memory, but of a different kind. Existing as a external rather than a mind-internal framework, it enables the distinction between architecture as material and as mental aid for the memory, both with direct influence on processes of memory.
The spatial framework of memory in Les Cadres sociaux de la mémoire Formation of the spatial framework of memory
The formation of the frameworks of memory takes place in childhood. In a passage about the social life and memory of the child in Les Cadres sociaux de la mémoire, Halbwachs presents the first considerations of the spatial framework of memory.3 The social frame of reference of the child of ten or twelve years is somewhat limited, he explains, and it sustains only a vague idea of society as a whole. It belongs to a smaller social circle of the family and friends, whose daily life takes place around the home, in certain rooms, gardens, or streets. Sensational and everyday events take place within this limited environment: ‘Thus, because of the habitual contact that we have with certain objects and people and the repeated impressions of our surroundings,
2 E.g. M Halbwachs, La Mémoire collective, ed. G Namer (1950; crit. edn, Paris, Albin Michel, 1997) [orig.,
‘Mémoire et société’ (1947)], 205. Cf. terms like ‘milieu extérieur’, ‘milieu matériel’, and ‘l’espace physique’.
Halbwachs, La Mémoire collective, 209.
3 M Halbwachs, Les Cadres sociaux de la mémoire, ed. G Namer (1925; facs. edn, Paris, Albin Michel, 1994), 95–98. The passage is omitted in Coser’s English translation. Because of the non-existence of this passage in English language, I will allow myself to quote extensively from this part to provide a smaller corpus of his thinking on space to English speakers.
the dominant images eventually engrave themselves more deeply than others in our mind’.4 Halbwachs continues the line of reasoning with a quote from Goethe’s autobiography:
When we desire to recall what befell us in the earliest period of youth, it often happens that we confound what we have heard from others with that which we really possess from our own direct experience … [Therefore] I am conscious that we lived in an old house, which in fact consisted of two adjoining houses, that had been opened into each other.5
Halbwachs explains that for Goethe the spaces he subsequently describes in detail constitute the framework in which a whole period of his life took place.
Rhetorically, he asks to what extent Goethe’s methodical arrangement of the text and clarity in the pictures agrees with the author’s clear and graphic conception and with what the child really saw.
What is often kept in memory of a house where we used to live is less the layout of the rooms, as they would be shown on an architectural plan, than impressions, which, if we wanted to place them in relation to each other, would maybe not make sense and sometimes contradict each other.6
While the child is limited to only some environments, the adult possesses a larger frame of reference. ‘Certainly’, Halbwachs points out,
for the adult, the house he lives in and the places in the city he frequently visits most often constitute something like a framework, but he knows that it is only a part of a larger defined totality, and he has an idea of the proportions of the parts in relation to the totality: the spatial framework that encloses the thought of the adult is therefore much larger.7
In this way, we should understand the relative importance of the home environment for the child’s thought compared to that of the adult, for whom it only makes up a smaller part of the total spatial framework of memory.
Besides, when we speak about a spatial framework, we do not mean something that resembles a geometrical figure. Sociologists have shown that in many primitive tribes space is not thought of as a homogeneous
environment, but its parts are differentiated by the mystical qualities attributed to them: a specific region, a specific direction that is under command of a
4 ibid., 95.
5 Quoted in ibid., 95–96. This translation from J W v Goethe, The Auto-biography of Goethe. Truth and Poetry: From My Own Life, tr. J Oxenford (London, Henry G. Bohn, 1848) [Ger. orig., Aus meinem Leben:
Dichtung und Wahrheit (1811–1814)], 1–2. My emphasis.
6 Halbwachs, Les Cadres sociaux, 96.
7 ibid., 97.
spirit or is identified with a specific clan of the tribe. Similarly, the different rooms of a house, specific nooks, specific pieces of furniture, or in the vicinity of the house, a specific garden, a specific street corner, because they usually evoke vivid impressions in the child’s mind and are associated with specific family members, with its games, with specific events, unique or recurring, because its imagination has animated and transfigured them, in some way they acquire an emotional value [for the child].8
The spatial framework is fully immersed in the social life of the child, and thus the different places and the associations act like a system of notions set in a spatial structure. This associative spatiality of the child Halbwachs sees as a physical environment that has been internalised and memorised. If architectural principles, material properties, and physical laws define the external world, then social and emotional connotations determine the spatial framework. The internal representation of space sustains a relationship with the physical environment, but does not share the same logic.
The spatial framework of memory and the material framework
For the adult, the home takes a similar role as for the child. If he was to leave a house in which he has spent a part of his life, it could appear as if he was leaving that part of his life behind. And in fact, Halbwachs explains, when the environment is not there anymore, and it stops to evoke the spatial framework in the person’s memory through its presence, there is a danger that the memories associated with all the places in that part of the framework may be forgotten. However, many of the memories from that period will cling to other objects, places, or reflections outside the realm of the home, or a meeting with people who have a relation to that place may evoke the period. For the adult, that environment forms only a minor part of the total framework of space and can more easily be considered dispensable. For the child, differently, a larger share of its framework may have been lost and with it its whole life and all the memories attached to its places and objects.
If a household is dispersed, the family scattered or extinguished, [the child]
can count only on itself to preserve the image of his home and everything associated with it. The image, moreover, is suspended in emptiness, since his mind was confined to the delimiting framework, and since he only has an ever so imprecise idea of its place in the totality of other images, a totality that he only encountered after it had already ceased to exist.9
8 ibid.
9 ibid., 98.
For the adult, the spatial framework of memory is not equally dependent on input from the environment that corresponds to it, to the material framework.
Halbwachs makes clear the intimate relationship that exists between the two.
We should not confuse them. The spatial framework of memory is formed by repeated interaction with the environment, but the resulting construction is not the representation of a geometrical reality, rather a notion created out of it, a conceptualisation.
When the individual is present in a part of the environment, the framework conceived in the mind amalgamates with the perception and produces a total image in his conscious mind. The space of the framework complements and contextualises the perceptive input. It expands the spatial awareness to encompass areas outside of the immediate perception, so that the person knows which room, garden, or street he can expect to find if he was to move out through the door. The framework also lends meanings and associations to space. For instance, a bed that a person observes in a room may be associated with the idea of the child that normally sleeps there and the person’s
emotional affiliations to that child. The environment, through its presence to the senses, evokes the spatial framework of memory and the memories and emotions associated with it, and it gives it a sense of reality. Two persons, or two social groups, may assign different meaning to the same environment and, consequently, the spatial framework of the place comes to carry different associative arrangements. Whereas the bed for one of them is associated with his child, for the other it may give associations to his own childhood. The materiality in front of both of them is appreciated and conceived differently.
In the fourth chapter of Les Cadres sociaux de la mémoire Halbwachs addresses localisation processes of remembrance, the searches in mind that one performs in order to become ‘conscious of the moment in which one has established [acquis] a memory’.10 If we recognise a person, or an image crosses our mind, we cannot localise the memory until we have become conscious of who or what or what place or situation the person or image relates to etc. It is an intellectual and reflective activity of the mind, he says, that establishes the memories, contextualises, and enriches them.
Localisation does not go through the images, but through the continuity or similarity of frameworks, he argues. He exemplifies this with a self-lived experience of watching the Vallula Massif in Vorarlberg, with its jagged summits standing out against a peculiar blue sky, with two or three pink clouds, and suddenly being reminded of a similar landscape he had thought
10 ibid., 114.
of another evening. At first unable to locate it, it was not until he could place it in relation to a spatial, temporal, and social framework that he could fully remember the similar experience at Saint-Gervais:
I had the impression of an image, for a moment suspended in the void, and which coincided almost exactly with the picture [of the landscape] that unfolded in front of me. It all happened as if a memory arose, without any help from the contexts of time, place, and environment, and it took me almost a minute to explore in my thought the time and place in which it could be placed and to recover its framework.11
Halbwachs brings in Bergson to assert his own standpoint. Bergson would argue that it is the similarity between the current impression and the memory image that causes the latter to occur in our mind. This helps us to localise the impression. Halbwachs proposes instead that we should understand it as if the frame of mind (cadre psychique) that is caused by current impressions of the environment can be localised with the help of the spatial framework of memory. The latter consists of fairly stable notions that we can actualise in mind at any moment to render the current percept complete or meaningful.
Halbwachs’s postulation offers a radical twist to the idea of Bergson (and other thinkers) that association in memory goes from one singular percept or memory image to another. Instead, Halbwachs asks us to recognise that it happens as a result of similarities in more stable concepts of space: the one created in mind upon seeing the environment, the other conjured up from memory. Spaces and spatial conceptualisations, rather than perceptual images, connote other spaces and conceptualisations. We should consider that the ability to remember in spatial situations might depend more on spatial understanding than on vivid impressions and memories.
Remember other things
By defining space in memory as a framework and not as inherent properties of memory images, like Bergson had done, Halbwachs gives it an essentially different character, emphasising its notional, dynamic, and schematic nature rather than its mathematical and geometrical. What the framework loses in terms of detail and accuracy, it gains in familiarity, flexibility, and operability. Its function in the reconstruction of other memories becomes more important than its status as a signifier of spatial properties and spatial relations. While it certainly may be employed to enable orientation and way-finding, which we will see in the theory of Kevin Lynch in the next chapter,
11 ibid., 117.
its use for social remembering remains one of the central tasks of the spatial framework of memory. It is the actualisation of space in memory that enables the reconstruction of other memories. We do not remember space as such; we remember it in order to bring to mind events, people, or other places. Its mnemonic function differentiates the spatial framework from space in memory images: ‘when we recall a city – its neighbourhoods, its streets, its houses – so many memories crop up, many of which seem to have been lost forever and which, in turn, help us to discover others’.12 The spatial framework is the means by which other things can be organised, retrieved, and disseminated, and in order to recollect the memories of events we need to bring it to mind and to be aware of it at all times.13
On the one hand, we can bring to mind the spatial framework to search for other memories. On the other hand, we may also stumble, literally and figuratively speaking, upon memories we thought we had forgotten, like when ‘we come back to places where we have spent a part of our life to relive and rediscover details that had vanished’.14 Halbwachs explained in the account from Vorarlberg how he localised the concept of what he perceived through its similarity with a spatial framework conjured up in memory. In a
On the one hand, we can bring to mind the spatial framework to search for other memories. On the other hand, we may also stumble, literally and figuratively speaking, upon memories we thought we had forgotten, like when ‘we come back to places where we have spent a part of our life to relive and rediscover details that had vanished’.14 Halbwachs explained in the account from Vorarlberg how he localised the concept of what he perceived through its similarity with a spatial framework conjured up in memory. In a