The Memory of a Place

Abstract

This paper focuses on the perceptual-phenomenological experience of place in the Faculty Housing built for professors of Jondishapour University (Shahid Chamran) in the city of Ahvaz in Iran. Based on an historical overview of Ahvaz, the paper employs a phenomenological approach to examine how the memory of childhood home as an inhabited space is associated with sensory engagement and how it is experienced differently over time. Faculty Housing was built in 1967–72 and was designed by the prominent Iranian architect Kamran Diba. Taking into consideration the significant sociocultural factors affecting Ahvaz in 1979–2018, this paper aims to examine and interpret the housing’s architectural and urban images, which have changed considerably over time and are now fallen into disrepair, with a loss of their vital and live atmosphere of the past. In order to achieve this goal, it examines and analyses a number of photographs from the creation of this residential complex and its present status. These include images of different architectural, urban, and landscape features as well as semidetached houses, apartments, the local shop, school, play areas, green spaces, separating brick walls, pools, and benches. In addition, the experiences of twenty-one former inhabitants of Faculty Housing are analysed and constructed through a survey questionnaire, the findings of which suggest that Gaston Bachelard’s phenomenological approach supports the comparative analysis of our imagined past experiences of a special place and new experiences after a considerable passage of time.