ABSTRACT
We are interested in the ways in which places are perceived and appropriated
across intervals of time or culture. Landscapes, buildings and urban environ-
ments are reconfigured in incommensurable ways by different groups, with
their own particular identities, concepts and preoccupations. The different
groups, bringing different sets of ideas and experiences to bear on the places
that they encounter, spontaneously have different experiences in their
encounters. The linking theme of the chapters is the volatility of meaning of
particular places in relation to how they have been understood by particular
groups, whether as lieux de mémoire, or as neglected sites of forgetting. Each
chapter deals with a building or place – a physical ‘object’, that has a degree
of solid continuity – which has been experienced in more than one culture,
and the experiences are documented so as to show the various ways in which
meaning shifts when a cultural context changes, usually in ways that were
wholly unanticipated by the designers of the places in question. The results
are often surprising, because we tend to have an idea of a historic place as
having an enduring meaning, so it can be rewarding to learn about earlier
constructions of meaning that involve the same building.
