the people are the city ...
History is often perceived as an objective account of significant events and facts. These facts are a distillation of historical memory accumulated from personal and monumental truths. As a society, we accept the notion that some experiences are more suited for official historical documentation while most remain within the realm of personal experiences. These personal and everyday experiences are what inform ...
the people are the city
the people are the city
the people are the city.
the people are the city
the people are the city
the people are the city relies on a vernacular experience of architecture and is composed of two distinct elements: an archival image and a text component, both retrieved from the CBC archives. The image is from the CBC Archive’s collection of photographs by Franz Lindner and shows an instructor with his students at the Vancouver Vocational Institute in 1963. The text "The people are the city" was a headline taken from a copy of the CBC Times, a weekly programming guide published during the 1960's. "The people are the city" was the title of a radio program covering a winter conference which aired on January 28, 1966 about the practice of local democracy and was a joint venture between the CBC and the Canadian Institute on Public Affairs.
From personal experience, I’ve always held the belief that in order to remember something - a place, a name, an idea - I need to say it three times. Similarly,
the people are the city
the people are the city
the people are the city appears three times almost as a reminder that architecture is informed by our experiences of it. It is an attempt at creating significance out of our banal and everyday interactions.
the people are the city
the people are the city
the people are the city comments on architecture’s social responsibility, that architecture and social spaces are fundamentally conceived and built from personal and vernacular histories that ultimately builds communities and contributes toward collective and official historical memories.
Paul de Guzman, February 2013