The City as an Archive of Events: Cultural Institutions as Architectural Infrastructures of Urban Memory

Abstract

This paper examines cultural institutions as architectural infrastructures that extend beyond physical boundaries to generate events, shape collective spatial experience, and contribute to the production of urban memory. Instead of interpreting the city primarily through permanent architectural forms, this research conceptualizes the urban environment as an archive of events, arguing that urban memory emerges continuously through interactions between architecture, collective action, and temporally situated spatial practices. The study investigates the Youth Tribune (Serbian: Tribina mladih) in Novi Sad as a case study of an institutional space whose architectural configuration and program enabled neo-avant-garde artistic practices to expand into public space. Attention is given to two performative actions–Linija (English: Line) by Tomaž Šalamun and the OHO Group, and Srce-predmet (English: Heart-Object) by Bogdanka Poznanović–analyzed here as spatial sequences that reorganized relationships between architecture, public space, and the collective. Methodologically, the research combines archival analysis with cartographic mapping to reconstruct movement trajectories, spatial transitions, and points of intensity generated by these ephemeral interventions. The findings suggest that cultural institutions can operate as spatial frameworks for event generation, shifting the analytical understanding of architecture from passive enclosure towards an active framework in memory production. By establishing this infrastructure-event framework, the paper advances architectural and urban theory with an analytical tool applicable to broader studies on architecture’s role in collective urban experience.