Sub-Urbanism and the Art of Memory

Sébastien Marot

This book is a sub-urbanist manifesto. Its author, Sébastien Marot, challenges the dominant role of the programme in regulating the design project, and argues that instead attention should be redirected towards the site – the site read in depth, with an active regard for memory. Exploring this analysis, he considers in turn Frances Yates’ book The Art of Memory, Sigmund Freud’s analogy between the past of a city and the workings of memory, Robert Smithson’s account of a tour of his suburban birthplace and Georges Descombes’ design for a small park in the Geneva suburb where he spent his childhood. Marot’s conclusion brings these different strands together and highlights, in memory, a precept that is essential to the renewal of current architecture. This AA Documents publication is a re-edition of Sébastien Marot’s Sub-Urbanism and the Art of Memory, originally edited by Pamela Johnston and published by AA Publications in 2003. It is based on a 1999 text by Marot, translated from the French by Brian Holmes.