Fragments of Belonging: Tracing Residential Memory in a Layered City

Date

2025-07-30

Author

Güneri Söğüt, Gizem Deniz

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This paper explores the evolving relationship between residential environments and their inhabitants by tracing urban fragments in the multi-layered town of Pergamon (Bergama). As a continuously inhabited city shaped by centuries of transformation, Pergamon offers a complex landscape where spatial memory, material reuse, and lived experience intersect. Departing from the ancient practice of spoliation—the reuse of architectural fragments—the study adopts a contemporary and expanded reading of the concept. It proposes a critical inventory that does not merely document material remains but interprets spatial, symbolic, and experiential fragments as relational elements that mediate between past and present. In this broader framework, traces of former urban forms and residential life are viewed not only as physical artifacts but also as carriers of meaning, perception, and social memory. Rather than treating the city as a static collection of objects, this approach positions it as a dynamic assemblage where layers of adaptation, rupture, and continuity coexist. Whether material or intangible, fragments are read as active mediators shaping how residents understand, inhabit, and adapt their environments over time. By engaging with this layered urban condition through an interpretive inventory, the study reveals how meaning is embedded, displaced, and reconfigured across generations. It contributes to the understanding of how residential environments are formed not only through design and function but also through accumulated narratives, partial remains, and evolving human-place relationships embedded in the everyday urban fabric.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/116920

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Department of Architecture, Conference / Seminar