Memories of places. Creativity and Reality through the travel experience

The travel experience and the idea of collecting places, customs, habits and architectural references through travel notebooks may be one of the oldest (and current) ways in which architects assume the reality of cities, their present-day needs, requirements and contexts. How to store memories of places? How can be useful instruments in the construction of contemporary cities? Beyond technological innovations, how do memories collected in travel notebooks contribute in the way in which cities are constructed within today’s realities and particularities, without losing sight of its geographical, political, social and human context? In most urban places it is possible to recognize distinctive characteristics, and dynamics that inhabitants have established (eating sites, groceries, local businesses, emblematic spots), as well as the way to use collective and urban spaces. These urban transformations can constantly change and must be intertwined with people’ reality, their formal/informal context, habits and customs, but agreed and shared interventions are necessary for a proper guideline of the boundaries encompassing the community. Urban spaces are continuously developed by inhabitants, so their function is not only construction of buildings or public spaces generically, but is based on particular people’s needs, making collective spaces more accessible, proper and social: the reorganization of the barrio, as a living ecosystem. How are memories of places retrieve and re-interpreted in the comprehension of contemporary cities? An attempt to respond is through a comparative case study of two barrios: San Salvario (Torino, Italia), San Antonio (Cali, Colombia). The didactic travel is an opportunity to study how to capture, represent and transmit memories: travel notebooks are the medium by which places are gathered into memoirs. These memoirs are architectural ones, taken from public spaces, cultures and histories of the built environment, but also implies to learn and observe ethnographic, geographic, chromatic, pictorial, perceptual, and sensory phenomena. Collecting places in memories involves reflections and analysis of sites and cities. This paper argues that travel as a didactic experience and formative instrument, manages to transcend subjectivity. Besides creating awareness to appreciate architecture, cities and cultures, travel’s role is its restitution, written or drawn, in the construction of a critical and pedagogical view of the city