The Memory Works: Between Monuments and Ruins, The Case of Contemporary Budapest

Authors

  • Rodrigo Rieiro Díaz

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7480/footprint.10.1.971

Abstract

This review article argues that Benjamin’s project to  construct a political explanation of the surrounding cultural world in developed capitalist societies, raised to a source of knowledge about the historical truth, finds an unmatched case of study in the contemporary ruinous urban nature of Budapest. Departing from the park of statues Memento Park, some urban features of the city are examined in the light of Benjamin’s semantics of the fragment to try to answer whether these thoughts apply to the discarded material world of our time. Could the already-there in Budapest provide a motivational basis for a reconstruction of the surrounding material world from the fragments of the past? The local phenomenon of romkocsma is addressed to wonder whether re-use of ruins could house this emancipatory potential or serve the interests of the hegemonic groups and the contemporary dominant discourse.

Author Biography

Rodrigo Rieiro Díaz

Rodrigo Rieiro Díaz studied architecture in Madrid, Barcelona and Budapest, where he attended to the Budapesti Mûszaki és Gazdaságtudományi Egyetem. He practised in Madrid, Istanbul and Copenhagen, and is completing a PhD at Escuela Técnica de Arquitectura de Madrid, on participative processes of transformation of housing, focusing on small-scale interventions. He is currently on a research stay at Statens Byggeforskningsinstitute in Copenhagen.

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Published

2016-04-18