Date of Award
2021
Document Type
Thesis
Handle
https://hdl.handle.net/10365/31948
Publisher
North Dakota State University
Rights
NDSU policy 190.6.2
URI
https://www.ndsu.edu/fileadmin/policy/190.pdf
Abstract
It is well known that we depend on our memory for our individual and collective sense of identity, meaning, and purpose. We assign significance to past, present, and future events through inter-subjective and ordered memories as we make meaning in the world. And yet, as suggested by author Bradford Vivian, memory does not exist in isolation but rather in a surprising symbiotic relationship with forgetting. Utilizing the interplay of absence and presence, as well as remembering and forgetting, this thesis explores architecture as the holder and creator of memory, exposing the hidden and invisible dimension of the AIDS pandemic of the 1980’s. Inspired by the lives of 12 different people, places, and objects unique to the AIDS pandemic, along with writings by Paul Monette and John Hejduk, this project seeks to disclose and remember while instilling a sense of hope and healing. Located in the East Cut of downtown San Francisco, the architecture revives memories in a direct relationship with the contemporary citizens of San Francisco by setting the imaginary into the fictional and releasing singular stories to the shared horizon in architectural terms.
Recommended Citation
Norby, Beau, "Public Memory and Forgetting: Making Visible the Invisibility of Loss in the San Francisco AIDS Pandemic" (2021). Architecture Theses. 540.
https://digitalcommons.ndsu.edu/architecture-theses/540