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The Repository of Memory: The memorial of Bessarabian deportations

Part 2 Project 2014
Valentin Ionescu
Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism | Romania
'Because we have survived, we are the witnesses, only we can tell the truth,
most of us died on the vast Siberian lands,
we have to tell the truth,
because if we don’t, lie will reign over.'
Nicolae Istrate (former political prisoner)

What project would better respond to what had happened? What would this project encompass? What I came to find, first from afar, by listening to the testimonies of those who have survived, going through some of the things which have been written, watching and debating on several movies, and further on, in Bessarabia, going from one place to another, meeting people, criticising previous attempts (on the subject), the entire approach, step by step, 'a list' began to take shape.

The list represents the attempt of putting toghether all of the fragments I have gathered on my ongoing research. I called it then 'Repository of memory'.
How does a deposit of memory become possible?

The answer to such a radical question is hallucinatingly simple, profound: the spoon, an object of worship of the individual endurance and of identity.
The inventory of the objects will make up the memory's dowery.

A man's memory is restored through each object which was gathered throughout his life's journey.

The place came as an answer to my research, puting forward the frame for the project's development, functioning as the braking point in the continuity of the surrounding space. How was it? What was it? What is it? What will it be? All these questions, starting from a simple description of what is given, the place as I found it, gradually make way for a waster teritory of the spatial archetypes. The enclosure ,the mound, the garden, hortus conclusus, the fountain and so on, are questioned in turn, project-wise.

The enclosure will bring forward two distinct worlds: that of the present the garden. and that of the past – the deposits o memory.

The entrances - the exits, the light - the darkness are forever intriguing. Little by little, you will go deeper, into deposits of memory.

Valentin Ionescu

Tutor(s)
Cristina Constantin
Andra Panait
Cosmin Pavel
2014
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