Memory Vessels: Architecture as a Living Archive | Masters Design Thesis

Site Context

My mother has moved a total of four times, and we started the process by recollecting her first home at Jalan Kayu. She unearthed old photographs, recreated scenes digitally, and experimented with different mediums, each attempt a way to understand and give form to her memories. 

With the home demolished, we began to recover it through drawing and conversation. Guided by her diary and old photographs, I mapped fragments of the past, understanding her memories as quiet imageries, glimpsed like peeking through the woodgrain.

Design Process

As my mom drew the memories she wished to hold on to, and we rebuilt the demolished home, re-membering its fragments and spaces, we saw an opportunity to design memory beyond drawing, giving form to what was once felt and lived. Inspired by letterboxes as quiet vessels of communication, we explored how the act of opening becomes an invitation, unveiling fragments that evoke memory, allowing for a personal encounter and sharing of stories.

We developed a method to systematically experience her memories, like her memory of the rain, which begins with the sound produced on a metal roof, drawing one towards the edge of shelter, where uneven ground meets the quiet act of collecting water in a bucket.

As we recollect her other homes, each with its own strategy. For her home at Hougang, which we could no longer enter as a new homeowner has since occupied the space, I digitally reconstructed her empty home and guided my mom through it. Her drawings revealed what held meaning, memories I then carried into the design.

For homes that I have also lived in at Serangoon and Sengkang, we turned to her diary, drawing together to fill in the gaps and extend the stories through the help of old photographs. Mapping the spatial qualities helped me understand what aspects held meaning and to potentially offer permanence to.

Final Outcome

As we collected the fragments along the way through each of her homes, we needed a way to organize them in our current living space. Across all her past homes, the altar stood central, a quiet witness to family and time. The design intervention gathers fragments from each altar across the homes as a way to organize the memories within our present home, stacking them from her younger years to adulthood. We envisioned the hacking of an underutilized bedroom, an expansion of our public living space where each memory vessel is carefully layered and oriented in tune with the site, where daylight can filter through, and where the wind might gently sound a chime.

Conclusion: Ultimately, this project shows how design can preserve fading memories by transforming a Mother’s recollections of past homes into tangible vessels within the present one. In doing so, it proposes a quiet, intimate method for holding onto personal histories before they slip away.

[This Academic Project has been published with text and images submitted by the student]