Jiahui Liu

Supervisor: Professor Gini Lee

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Commemoration and contemplation in a culture of amnesia
-    Re-interpreting Flagstaff Garden

Contemporary demands challenged the traditional forms of commemoration and contemplation over the track of a history of cemetery and memorial designs.

Living In a culture of amnesia, we all belong to part of an ocular centrism world that Juhani suggested in the ‘Eyes of the skin’ to be perceived predominantly by the privileged vision under the elimination and suppression of other senses, reinforcing a sense of detachment and alienation, causing us to live in a perpetual present, flattened by speed and simultaneity. We are disconnected with the land and water from the day they vanish from our sight, as well all creatures of living form that used to be all around us, now replaced by super blocks of buildings and busy streets, provoking no sense of sensory experiences, emotions or personal feelings. The city became an empty vessel that drifted long from its history, rejecting ideas of commemoration and contemplation, yet both historic and contemporary rituals cross cultures have proven them to be in an integral part of us that cannot be separated from everyday living.

Using Flagstaff garden as a testing ground, the project explores opportunities to restore the connection we once had with land and water through linking sensorial experiences tightly to the spatial, physical and intangible qualities that constitute spaces of commemoration and contemplation.

The new generation Flagstaff garden would enable users of the next century to regain the ability to root their own feelings, memories and narratives in the civic domain, while having access to the forgotten narratives of the past; Granting people with the space and opportunity for commemoration and contemplation in civic living to bypass the culture of amnesia.