Created by Daniels Faculty student Jahanvi Sharma, this film project was part of the thesis prep portion of a research option studio taught by Associate Professor John Shnier in the winter semester of 2015.
In Jahanvi’s words, “A void is a container for a collection of memories. It carries traces of the past and the potential for an unknown future. It is in a constant state of flux and can be experienced or occupied on several different levels.
The city of Christchurch was struck by a devastating magnitude 6.3 earthquake on February 22, 2011. The earthquake took lives and left the core of the city in a state of ruin. The once thriving social hub is now hollow – a series of voids, which represent the memories they hold and will continue to accumulate.
I would like to explore the significance and meaning of memory in Architecture with Christchurch being the case study. The city is constantly changing due to ongoing geological activities and as it is simultaneously being rebuilt. It is also changing in character as old forgotten traditions resurface and are revisited and in a new context. This is an incredible opportunity to speculate the change in memory’s relevance and relationship to monuments and built form over time – to discover the space of memory. It is a means to question how we commemorate and memorialize events, which are traumatic but temporary and how the permanence of physical architectural objects responds to the fleeting nature of the same.
With this film, I have attempted to create a form and space for memory – a layered palimpsest which alludes to a new world where the past, present and future co-exist.”
For more information about the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto, visit us at www.daniels.utoronto.ca.
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