ABSTRACT
An imprint, as a phenomenon, which is essentially architectural, is determined by the series of contradictions. Namely, an imprint emerges from the demolishment of an existing architecture; it exists in this newly formed spatial gap within the urban tissue and disappears with the construction of a new building. While architecture as such begins with construction and ends with demolition, the imprint demonstrates a specific kind of architectural paradox-its very creation through an inverse process (Žugić, Marić and Mirkov 2010). At the same time, the question of materiality of the very imprint reveals new layers of contradictions. While the imprint is primarily determined by
1 INTRODUCTION
The articulation of an idea of the Architectural Imprint is deeply connected to processes of building, and the way they are perceived on the level of urbanity. The process of creation of a single building demands a certain duration, of several months, sometimes years. On the level of townscape, the existence of this process is never negligible. Similar to the transition of the entire society, the morphological transition of a city as its consequence is rarely happening at once. Considering the perceived scenery of the city, the individual processes of construction are changing almost on daily basis. In that way, a morphological transition is built by a collection of ephemeral, unique images. Understood as connected time sequences, these images demonstrate an increased potential for being open to what Diana Agrest refers to as mise-ense´quence (Agrest 1998: 198-213). Here, the urban environment is understood as a set of fragments, rather than a closed “object of reading”, where the analysis focuses on the conditions of content, rather than the content itself. Mise-en-se´quence,
the demolished house-morphologically and on the level of meanings it absorbs-its very existence is conditioned exclusively by a neighbouring building. In that way, it is impossible to read the materiality of an imprint independently of any of the two components that determine it, while at the same time, it essentially does not belong to either of the entities. The imprint does not belong to a nonexisting house, but it functions as a specific form of the memory of the house. Being partly defined by the physical void left after the demolishment of the house, and by the borderline between the two individual building sites, it becomes an explicit materiality of an architectural absence, rather than a mere witness of empty space (Fig. 1 and Fig. 2).
