walter benjamin archive.
Junior Hons Project (2008)
Paris, France.
The programmatic function of an archive is questioned and tested in order to gain an understanding of its relevance in modern context – a time in which the traditional method of storing and exhibiting artefacts is changing in view of contemporary media. An architectural response is proposed as a means of exploring the tensions inherent in engagement & passivity; site & situation; object & subject; completeness & fragmentation.
The facility is designed to situate The Arcades Project – the unfinished works of the cultural critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin – within the city in which the writings are based, Paris. The project draws programatically upon two figures of Benjamin’s writings: 1. the Flaneur, or wandering subject, who engages in a condition of passivity; and 2. the Grand Narrator, who expresses a means of accumulating of the Flaneur’s collective experience. These figures are used as mechanisms for the architectural arrangement and situation of facilities throughout the building.
