ABSTRACT
What makes a space contemplative? Or what is it about the character of a
space that induces contemplation? I might start to formulate an answer
with a bit of semantic wrangling. Specifically, I think it would be useful to
differentiate contemplation from commemoration, an experience with which
it shares some qualities, but from which it is nonetheless fundamentally
distinct. Commemoration is linked to specific events or people: it is a remem-
brance of things past, to borrow the familiar translation of the title of Proust’s
great novel, or a mindfulness of people whose values or experiences we
might seek to emulate. As such, commemoration is a form of contemplation.
But the contemplation with which I am concerned here is more abstract: it
