INTUITION, MEMORY AND IDENTITY
‘I throw a spear into the darkness. That is intuition. Then I must send an army into the darkness to find the spear. That is intellect’.
Ingmar Bergman
In this short essay inspired by Reena Ardeshana’s Institute of Memory project located in Bucharest (referred to throughout as ‘the project’), I will examine how her three ‘gazes’ intertwine to facilitate an intuitive, psycho-geographic means of forming Place. These locational readings, enchantingly titled ‘child’s’, ‘ruin’ and ‘labyrinth’, in themselves suggest wider themes of intuition, memory and identity inherent in the architect’s working method. The methodology of the project is unusual and therefore pertinent in that it is both analytical and playful. Ultimately my perspective is psychological, and in particular Jungian in that it draws on the concepts of the Swiss psychologist C.G. Jung (1875 -1961) and the school of analytical psychology. By this means, I propose a psychological reading of the design process albeit in absentia. The Project, then, is more than the project.
Key words: intuition, memory, identity, play, space, Jungian psychoanalysis