‘Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things’, Marcus Tullius Cicero.
There is only the present. The past is a memory and the future is unknown. Everything is memory.
We know who we are by what we remember. We know where we belong by the places we remember. We hold to our companions by the memories we share.
As time takes us towards oblivion, we use our memory to preserve the moment. But we forget. We try to hold time still with memorials and ceremonies. We create traditions to share and repeat the experiences we wish to possess together. This how we know who we are, where we belong and with whom we share our belonging. If we lose our memories we lose our identity as people and communities. Traditions are our memories made manifest.
But time cannot stand still. The same memorial changes its meaning as time passes. Ceremonies mutate. Traditions are abandoned and new ones invented. The infinite reservoir of historical fact is constantly recast. But still we treasure them as without them we are cast adrift without personality or belonging.
These fundamentals of existence, identity and community are expressed in our buildings and places. Through an understanding of time and memory, we can gain a better comprehension of how architecture and urban design reinforce our identity individually and communally.
Robert Adam trained at the University of Westminster and in 1973 won a Rome Scholarship. He has been in practice in the city of Winchester since 1977 and now directs Robert Adam Architectural Consultants. He is a professor of urban design at the University of Strathclyde.
He is well-known for his traditional and classical architecture, as a pioneer of contextual urban design, an author and a scholar. He lectures widely in the UK and abroad.
He has written numerous historical, critical and theoretical papers. Books include: Classical Architecture, a complete handbook; The Seven Sins of Architects; Heritage and Culture; The Globalisation of Modern Architecture; and Time for Architecture.
Robert founded the International Network for Traditional Building Architecture and Urbanism (INTBAU) in 2001 and the Traditional Architecture Group (TAG) in 2003. Many awards include the ICAA Arthur Ross Award in 2005 and the Richard H. Driehaus Prize in 2017.
This lecture is part of the City of Rome programme, and it is held in English. It can be accessed both in person and online. To access online, you need to register through the link above.
