A Reading of Architecture Through Bergson’s Schema of Memory

1. The Foundations of Bergson’s Philosophy (a very brief summary)

Bergson invites us to think of time as intrinsic to our subjective experience rather than as a measurement of space. He understood the nature of reality as transient and in constant change. His theory of ‘duration’, which permeates all of his philosophy, is a dynamic system where time is constantly unfolding becoming more than the sequence of moments. Early in his philosophy, Bergson raises an important criticism, that we have the tendency of spatialising time. By using time as a mere measurement we ascribe positions to things in space; it makes time an abstraction to make sense of the world around us. This tendency also raises confusion between two distinct kinds of multiplicities – discrete multiplicities, defined by differences of degree, inherently quantitative and homogeneous; and continuous multiplicities, related to subjective experience, non-divisible, qualitative and heterogeneous. The first kind is characteristic of spatial extension, where we can juxtapose things to be counted, divided and abstracted so we may act upon them. The second kind is characteristic of temporal extension, can only be grasped through the experience of things, is indivisible, and never repeated. We can summarise the concept of duration as the heterogeneous and qualitative multiplicity of the universe, characterised by the continuous change of things, including people, objects and the world itself, each with an individuated rhythm. Bergson notes that the erroneous habit of spatialising time emerges from a tendency of the intellect in its attempt to act upon matter^[1], and to disrupt this habit, he invokes that it is necessary a certain “violence” to the habits of the mind (Bergson, 1912, p. 63). From this observation, he concludes that there are two distinct kinds of knowledge:

“The first implies that we move round the object; the second that we enter into it. The first depends on the point of view at which we are placed and on the symbols by which we express ourselves. The second neither depends on a point of view nor relies on any symbol. The first kind of knowledge may be said to stop at the relative; the second, in those cases where it is possible, to attain the absolute.” (Bergson, 1912, p. 1)

In other words, relative knowledge, objective, from an exterior point of view, where things are divided and abstracted into discrete parts and analysed separately from the whole, characteristic of the intellect; and absolute knowledge, where things are not divisible nor static and can only be grasped from a kind of empathy with things, or as Bergson notes, a “sympathy” inserting us into the interior of things (Bergson, 1912, p. 7). To attain this kind of “absolute” knowledge, Bergson appeals to a radical method, i.e. intuition. We shouldn’t confuse this intuition as a superficial feeling or impression; instead, it is a profound interior experience in which we force ourselves to adopt the concrete movements of reality; a kind of widened perception that enables us to see beyond the immediate perceptions of things and grasp their duration.

The above is an extremely brief exposition of Bergson’s main philosophical ideas. Although each deserves a more complete explanation, I mention them here as a theoretical background to understand Bergson’s schema of memory, which follows.^[2]

2. Bergson’s Schema of Memory

Bergson conceives of matter as an “aggregate of images”, he says:

“Matter, in our view, is an aggregate of ‘images’. And by ‘images’ we mean a certain existence which is more than that which the idealist calls a representation, but less than that which the realist calls a thing – an existence placed halfway between the ‘thing’ and the ‘representation.’” (Bergson, 1896/1991, pp. 9–10)

There is an essential distinction in the above statement between the concept of image and of representation. While a representation can be understood as a kind of mental snapshot, an abstraction of something that has a correspondence with the real, an image, in Bergson’s view, is dynamic and participates in the rhythms of reality and are as fluid and susceptible to change. We can, therefore, relate representation with the kind of relative knowledge that Bergson illustrates and image with the kind of absolute knowledge. Thus, it is through the method of intuition that the perception of images is possible. If we only resort to the habits of our intellect, we end up with abstract representations, which, although correlate to something in reality, remain static and cannot refer directly to the “thing-in-itself”.^[3]

Bergson notes how the images that constitute matter are not all entirely perceptible, particularly when considering the two kinds of extension mentioned above – spatial and temporal. Bergson observes that we acknowledge the existence of all things in space, even though we may not always perceive them; however, things in time have a limited existence, i.e. only what is present has existence. He explains this with a simple diagram, where the horizontal axis represents all objects juxtaposed in space, the vertical axis represents all objects in time (i.e., our recollections), and the intersection of these axes is the present moment. We can consider the following scenario: when in a room, we do not deny the existence of things beyond that room, even if we do not perceive them (other rooms, a street, other buildings, people, things, etc.); however, we deny the same logic to things in time, unless they are part of our present perceptions or metal state (i.e. the recollection of a specific memory). Bergson concludes:

“Space thus appearing to preserve indefinitely the things which are there juxtaposed, while time in its advance devours the states which succeed each other within it.” (Bergson, 1896/1991, p. 143)

Figure 1.The two directions of perception, in Bergson’s “Matter and Memory”, p143.

To resolve this problem (concerning the reality of memory), Bergson proposes the distinction between actual and virtual states. Thus, memories may be actualised and perceived in the present moment but also preserve an entirely virtual existence beyond perception. For Bergson, the virtual is just as real as the actual and has agency over how we understand things. Although it is from the present that we appeal to memory, not all memories are simultaneously revealed; some remain obscured. Bergson gives the analogy of the focusing of a camera in how these images begin to materialise in our consciousness (1896/1991, p. 134). Regarding the notion of image, he says:

“Here I am in the presence of images, in the vaguest sense of the word, images perceived when my senses are opened to them, unperceived when they are closed. All these images act and react upon one another in all their elementary parts according to constant laws which I call laws of nature […].” (Bergson, 1896/1991, p. 17)

The movement between virtual and actual provides an understanding of how we recall memories and provides the past with a real existence. However, it still does not identify where memory, resides. A common misunderstanding is to answer that memory exists in the brain. However, Bergson is against this notion, memory cannot be contained in the brain as if we are dealing with an archival system. In Bergson’s view, the brain is merely a centre for processing information.^[4]

“The brain is no more than a kind of central telephonic exchange, […] an instrument of analysis in regard to the movement received and an instrument of selection in regard to the movement executed.” (Bergson, 1896/1991, p. 30)

Bergson does not deny a relationship between consciousness and the brain. His argument criticises the notion of containment and treating the brain as something separate from the world; particularly from his definition of matter as an “aggregate of images”. The brain (as all matter) is not isolated; Ansell-Pearson describes Bergson’s view of the brain as “part of and from ‘life’ treated as a sphere of praxis and activity”(2010, p. 64). He continues:

“The brain is in the world, not in the head, and it’s only a small part of life of the organism, the part which is limited to the present. Bergson’s starting point is to criticise the notion of some detached isolated object, such as the brain, as the progenitor of our representation of the world. The brain is part of the material world. […] The body is a centre of action and not a house of representation.” (Ansell-Pearson, 2010, p. 64)

Developing his theory of memory, Bergson proposes two regulatory ideas, i.e. ‘pure perception’ and ‘pure memory’.^[5] The first is directed towards the immediate present and the actions of the body. To understand ‘pure perception’, Bergson imagines a being with no memory: “[…] a being placed where I am, living as I live, but absorbed in the present and capable by giving up every form of memory, of obtaining a vision of matter both immediate and instantaneous” (1896/1991, p. 32). This perception is our direct encounter and contact with matter, our immediate present. It is subtractive in the sense that all other peripheral data is removed; it has no past or memory, and no future can be imagined. Guerlac suggests that “in principle, Pure Perception would coincide with matter itself” (2006, p. 117). On the other hand, a ‘pure memory’ is directed towards the past and, therefore, entirely virtual and akin to a pure idea. However, for Bergson, these are only theoretical propositions; perception and memory, although distinct in kind, are always mixed. He says:

"There is no perception which is not full of memories. With the immediate and present data of our senses, we mingle a thousand details out of our past experience. […]

Our perceptions are undoubtedly interlaced with memories, and, inversely, a memory […] only becomes actual by borrowing the body of some perception into which it slips. […] perception and recollection, always interpenetrate each other, are always exchanging something of their substance as by a process of endosmosis." (1896/1991, pp. 33, 67)

It is from the present that we appeal to memory through our perceptions. If we consider the movements between perception and memory, the more we move towards perception, the more we engage with the immediate contact of matter; the more we move towards memory, the more we engage with the virtual images that constitute matter. This schema of memory then seems to have a dual function; on the one hand, it extends and interweaves the past with the present; on the other, it threads a multitude of moments into a single intuition, contracting the duration of things into perception. Bergson says:

“Memory, inseparable in practice from perception, imports the past into the present, contracts into a single intuition many moments of duration.” (1896/1991, p. 73)

For Bergson, memory is “coextensive with consciousness” (1896/1991, p. 151). In other words, that which does not act in the immediate present may cease to be conscious to us; however, this does not mean it ceases to exist altogether. He says:

“[…] consciousness may not be the synonym of existence […] The chief office of consciousness is to preside over action and to enlighten choice. […] all else remains in shadow. […] Restore to consciousness its true role: there will no longer be any more reason to say that the past effaces itself as soon as perceived that there is to suppose that material objects cease to exist when we cease to perceive them” (1896/1991, p. 141)

To illustrate the workings of memory, Bergson suggests the figure of an inverted cone. The lower plane, external to the cone, is the plane of existence; it represents objective reality and, therefore, spatial extension. Point S, the cone’s apex, is our immediate present, the moment of contact with all the perceptions space can afford, thus, all possibilities for action. The successive planes (AB) represent the virtual multitude of planes where memory, resides. However, we should not take this illustration as a mere representation of the working of memory; we must infuse it with the necessary motion of things. I.e., point S is never static and is always in continuous movement (even when stationary, our sense organs continuously receive data from the world around us); the memory-images that exist in the virtual planes (AB) are also in constant flux, ever contracting and combining with perceptions or expanding back into the cone, retrieving into shadow and unconsciousness.

Figure 2.Bergson’s diagram for his schema of memory, in ‘Matter and Memory’, 1896, p162.

In Bergson’s words:

“[T]he mind travels unceasingly over the interval comprised between its two extreme limits, the plane of action and the plane of dream. […] but the action is not able to become real unless it succeeds in encasing itself in the actual situation, that is to say, in that particular assemblage of circumstances which is due to the particular position of the body in time and space. […] The activity of the mind goes far beyond the mass of accumulated memories, as this mass of memories itself is infinitely more than the sensations and movements of the present hour; but these sensations and these movements condition what we may term our attention to life, and that is why everything depends on their cohesion in the normal work of the mind, as in a pyramid which should stand upon its apex.” (1896/1991, pp. 172–173)

3. A Bergsonian Reading of Architecture: A Chapel in Ronchamp

We tend to perceive architecture as a stable and fixed image. The ways we produce and understand buildings are inherently spatial. However, when we compare architecture against other art forms, we verify that architecture is only fully understood when experienced through time. We can look at a painting or a sculpture from an alienated position and build an understanding from our observation – a relationship between the object and its observer – but in the case of architecture, we must move through it, rely on our unfolding perceptions and experience. Thus, the moment of contact between our individual psychic life and a particular space strikes us as unique. It is like a strike of lightning that will never repeat itself, which, for a moment, intertwines our character, identity, and our own memories with the experience of that space in a common duration.

Bergson inserts the subject into the real, not as an observer, but as an integral part of the images that constitute the universe, putting subjectivity and objectivity on equal terms. Through his philosophy of memory, i.e. the notion of virtual memory-images, Bergson opens the horizon of existence beyond what we can perceive, rendering the virtual past with an ontological status and agency. Certainly, buildings do not possess an inner psychic life. However, they have history, and memories can be substantiated or embodied in their walls. Time and time again, the notion of memory is evoked in relation to architecture, either as social memory, e.g. monuments, a form of memorialising an event or architecture’s participation in history, or as vernacular memory, a way of doing or making (Anderson, 1999). However, the question of how memory become embodied or materialised in architecture is often neglected. So, how can Bergson’s theory of memory to provide a better understanding of architecture? Particularly when he did not address the discipline of architecture, except for one paragraph in the introduction to ‘Time and Free Will’.

“We find architecture, in the very midst of its startling immobility, certain effects analogous to those of rhythm. The symmetry of form, the indefinite repetition of the same architectural motive, causes our faculty of perception to oscillate between the same and the same again, and gets rid of those customary incessant changes which in ordinary life brings us back without ceasing to the consciousness of our personality: even the faint suggestion of an idea will then be enough to make the idea fill the whole of our mind. Thus art aims at impressing feelings on us rather than expressing them […].” (Bergson, 1889/1910, p. 15)

So far, I have focused Bergson’s philosophy and his schema for memory. However, theory must be useful, it must function (Deleuze, 1972). Following I will apply Bergson’s schema to a specific work of architecture, i.e. Le Corbusier’s design for a chapel in Ronchamp. The first step is to construct an understanding of the different kinds of memories that intervene in the production and appreciation of the architecture; some are related closely to context, others correlate formaly with more distant objects, others perhaps more unconscious are present through the architect’s subjective experiences. Secondly, it is to verify if Bergson’s schema holds in demonstrating how a diverse source of memories can form the ground for the work itself.

The context of the chapel carries with it a history and memories of its own. Le Corbusier’s chapel replaces a prior one severely damaged during WWII in the autumn of 1944. However, the site has been a place of pilgrimage since at least the 9^th century, and this existing chapel had already been a reconstruction and extension of another chapel struck by lighting in 1913 (Pauly, 2008, p. 50). Beyond the religious significance of the site and its history of destruction and rebuilding, there is also the landscape. On his first visit to the site on June 4^th 1950, Le Corbusier said:

“On the hill, I had meticulously drawn the four horizons. […] It was they which unlocked, architecturally, the echo – the visual echo in the realm of shape.” (Pauly, 2008, p. 52)

Canon Ledeur, secretary of the Besançon Comission d’Art Sacré, who had recommended the appointment of Le Corbusier, recalls the initial sketches drawn by the architect:

“I can remember so well his immediate reaction to the site: the first line he drew – this south wall (tracing a curved line). Next he visualised the pilgrims in front of the wall, where he placed the altar whose curve echoes that of the south wall: this is the east wall; and then all he had to do was to join the two curves together!” (Pauly, 2008, p. 52)

These initial sketches and reactions demonstrate how the production of a work of architecture never exists in a vacuum; at the very minimum, there is at least a topography (a surface) and an environment. This context already furnishes possibilities – affordances, which according to Gibson (1977), are the perceptions of the possibility for action. From Bergson, we already saw that perceptions are always interwoven with memory. Le Corbusier identifies these initial sketches as a “dialogue” and “response” to the site:

“The conceptual process was not abstract, but rather responded to a sensation, to a visual and sensory experience, namely transcribing onto the plan the contact established with the site and the four horizons.” (Pauly, 2008, p. 59)

The chapel’s design emerges from both actual and virtual factors: the physical constraints of the landscape, like the four horizons or the ascension to a sacred space atop a hill – something already noted by Le Corbusier in his sketches of Delphi (Providência, 2022, p. 24) – and virtual factors like the affordance of potential experiences and actions, or the religious significance of the place. A crucial point should be raised: not only does architecture emerge from pre-existing memory-images and perceptions, but also from virtual possibilities not yet actualised. Bergson distinguished that, although they are always mixed, perception and memory are different in kind; however, the distinction between memory and imagination is not as clear – both are entirely virtual and akin to idea. The difference may be of degree, depending on the tendency towards the past or the future. However, assigning a direction to time falls into Bergson’s original criticism that we tend to spatialise it. As Bergson noted, memories are appealed to from the present moment with a view towards a potential action raised by perception; although a past recollection, there is something of potentiality in memory. In the context of creativity, imagination, usually associated with the future, can never emerge from nothing^[6]; there is always a pre-existing ground or surface. Therefore, the difference between memory and imagination may be just the direction perception is turning towards.

However, the memory-images from which architecture emerges are not only those of the place; other forms of memory are at play. Some come from the architect’s own experiences and can be appealed to consciously and unconsciously. I have mentioned Le Corbusier’s travels to the East, i.e. his visit to Delphi, and other correlations can be established, i.e. the architect’s sketch of the great wall of the Naqsh-i-Rustam necropolis in Iran and the initial carvings on the chapel’s south wall; the constructions under rock formation at el Puig de la Balma, Saint Llaurenç del Munt National Park, a location the architect was familiar with from his proposal for Sainte-Baume; or the architect’s experience with the architecture and culture of the M’Zab Valley in Algeria (Providência, 2022, p. 30). The M’Zab vernacular is particularly interesting in its relation to Ronchamp. The mosque of Sidi Ibrahim at El-Afteuf, also a place of pilgrimage, has its access through a path that navigates the landscape. It presents similar triangular openings and thick walls with white roughcast; these walls reveal a certain plasticity in their form. The openings control how light enters the space, diffusing it; in the interior, cavities are carved into the wall. At Ronchamp, we find many of the same elements. The correspondence between the mosque and the design of Ronchamp is not the copying or referencing of one building to design the other; it is the architect’s conscious or subconscious memory informing the design. Memories that have been sketched and reinforced into the mind become materialised again. However, memory is not (re)materialised precisely how it was before or in the same form; memory is actualised in the resolution of the design problem, not in an objective manner but intuitively, guiding the hand of the architect.

Other memories emerge from what Le Corbusier called 'objects á reaction poétique’, a collection of objects from which he drew aesthetic research, e.g. the crab shell used as a device to resolve the structure of the roof or the clipping of a hydroelectric dam section found in the architect’s file entitled “documents preparation Ronchamp.” (Pauly, 2008, pp. 59, 72–73). Other objects or constructs are brought into play a posteriori, from the appreciation of the work by others, after the fact, e.g. the association of the chapel with archaic pre-historic structures like the Dolmen (Providência, 2022, p. 40). Some memories were intentionally embodied into the fabric of the chapel, i.e. the reuse of the pre-existing chapel’s rubble into the walls of the new chapel and the ‘Pyramid of Peace’ memorial constructed on site. Finally, the material produced by the architect also forms additional objects of memory – sketches, annotations, models, etc. Providência (2022) notes:

“[Ronchamp] was conceived under the sign of metamorphoses of memory and appears as a particular case of objects of memory, memorabilia, as a resource in the design process. For Le Corbusier, a collector and persistent producer of memories associated with his experience, these objects take on various shapes and configurations. […] To these physical objects, be they a collection of pipes or stones, we will have to add the visual elements and notes produced by the architect himself, such as journal annotations, collected postcards, photographic records of travels or plastic experiments, architectural design drawings or constructed models. They are referred to in previous narratives or incorporated in the publications made, extending the concept of memory object to all objects built by the architect himself.” (Providência, 2022, p. 20)

I have illustrated the sources of memory in this particular case; although this does not represent a complete inventory of all potential sources, it demonstrates the sheer variety of how memory can be appealed to and embodied in a work of architecture. Applying this to Bergson’s schema involves an effort to not make these memories stagnant representations, which are then somehow abstractly applied to a design. On the contrary, we must consider these memories transient images in constant flux, providing an openness for new memories to be continuously added and brought forth. Such an understanding of architecture brings it closer to the idea of the event rather than the notion of an object. If we consider the variety of durations as distinct rhythms, we can conclude, as Bergson did, that the slowest rhythms, almost imperceptible, begin to coincide with perception, i.e. with matter itself. Architecture becomes an “aggregate of images”, never entirely matter or idea, never entirely actual or virtual, but the intra-relationship of all durations, i.e. time. I propose the following diagram, which applies Bergson’s schema to the chapel at Ronchamp; however, with the note that such a static diagram merely represents another whose movement is ceaseless.

Figure 3.Memory cone diagram of the chapel in Ronchamp

4. Conclusion: Architecture as an ‘Aggregate of Images’

Bergson proposes a genuinely active memory that participates in the present and the future’s making. The past is no longer just an ephemeral idea or representation of a mental state; it has agency. We appeal to memory-images from the present, condensing them from the virtual state and effectively actualising them. An object is not only what we afford but also what we bring and gather – a constant movement effectively extending memory into the world. Bergson’s schema preserves a high degree of indeterminacy. Indeterminacy is the very fabric and nature of reality; it is the plasticity, openness, and production without a foreseen result. “Plasticity means developing across time so that time, rather than space, becomes the organising principle.” (Bell, 2004). Through this creative movement between different durations, true novelty emerges, and the design process becomes a truly iterative and creative gesture, not a series of abstractions. Through a Bergsonian understanding, architecture becomes more understood as an unfolding event with its own durations instead of a stable, immutable object. Such an understanding opens new avenues, not just for appreciating the built environment but, more importantly, for the epistemology, production and design of architecture.