The Living Memory of Cities 2022/23

The Living Memory of Cities is a project originally conceived by Dr José de Paiva as an international symposium, and convened thereafter as a collaboration between Eric Parry Architects and London Met's research group Ecological, Architectural and Civic Humanities in Design (EACHiD) at the University's Centre for Urban and Built Ecologies (CUBE).

Over the last few decades, the field of architecture has been enriched by generous contributions, from research and education to the work on projects responding to the urban scale of cities. Across a vast body of work – drawn and written, published and built – many authors have been a living reference for generations of architects by deepening the field of thinking, dwelling, building in the world we live. This same group now comes together for a forum on cities and their time, and the layers of their history: not so much those layers we recall or have now forgotten, but those that cities remember. Intervening in this living ground is often the beginning of a debate that challenges time-honoured custom as well as new ways of life, all of which have their most visible reflection in the field of architecture.

These online seminars have as their main focus the contemporary drama of intervening in the historical fabric of cities, which is also the fabric of living memory. This is a central topic within the scope of urban projects cast through the light of architectural tradition and urban memory in a world undergoing fast transition and change. The series aims to uncover a broader territory and body of work as well as contributing to the international debate: on what we have inherited, on what we have been building and the cities in which we live today.

Please sign up for tickets for an online seminar by using the following booking links. Everyone is welcome.

The Living Memory of Cities
Seminar series 2022–23