Inhabiting Time: Embodied Memory and Spatial Temporality in the Built Environment

1. Introduction

Human experience in the built environment transcends physical functionality, incorporating sensory, emotional, and temporal dimensions that shape our perception and memory. Architecture, in this context, acts as an active mediator between body, space, and time — not only sheltering experiences, but also modulating, reinforcing, or reconfiguring them.

The notion of inhabited time proposes an expanded understanding of architecture as an extension of embodied memory, where the built space becomes intertwined with the sensory, affective, and cognitive experiences of the moving body. This perspective resonates directly with the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1945/2012), who considers the body as the starting point of perception and consciousness, and with Henri Bergson (1896/2004), for whom memory is not a static record but a living duration. Crucially, Bergson distinguishes between habit memory (embodied dispositions sedimented in action) and image or phenomenal memory (the evocative recall of past images), a nuance that clarifies how memory operates at once in motor routines and in the virtual field of recollection — always in tight interplay with perception. This distinction, further discussed in recent architectural readings of Bergson, helps explain how the present is continually composed by the co-presence of remembered images and embodied habits in situ (see Bergson, 1896/2004; Rego, 2024).

Edward Casey (2000) further deepens this discussion by arguing that place hosts and “sponsors” memories, becoming a co-author of remembrance alongside the body. Memory, therefore, is not a static archive, but a dynamic phenomenon that emerges from the relationship between movement, presence, and spatiality. Pallasmaa (2012) sustains that the built environment, by engaging multiple senses, directly affects the mechanisms of affective and mnemonic evocation.

This differentiation is elaborated by authors such as Yi-Fu Tuan (1977) and Relph (1976). Following their insight, we underscore an additional layer: space can be approached as an abstract category of openness and potential, whereas place designates an existential, phenomenal reality grounded in lived experience, identity, and attachment. Space becomes place when it is lived — when the body attributes relational and temporal meaning to it. Casey (2000), when addressing topographic memory, points out that place “sponsors” remembrance not merely by being present, but by offering itself as a sensitive frame of experience. Architecture, therefore, does more than define space: it actively participates in the construction of place — space transformed by memory and bodily permanence. In what follows, we privilege the term place whenever referring to lived spatiality.

To this debate, the field of applied neuroscience adds significant contributions, especially through studies on embodied cognition. Gallese and Lakoff (2005) demonstrate that the brain’s sensorimotor systems are also involved in the construction of spatial concepts and meaning, reinforcing that architectural experience is inseparable from corporeality.

This article proposes a dialogue across these interrelations, seeking to understand how architecture can be designed to evoke and sustain affective memories, promote symbolic continuity, and support temporally lived spatial experiences. By integrating phenomenological, cognitive, and design-based references, it aims to contribute a sensitive and grounded approach to the understanding of memory in the built environment.

At the same time, memory in space is not only sensory or therapeutic; it is also political. Places host competing narratives and unequal distributions of visibility. Bell hooks shows how belonging and “homeplace” are entangled with race, gender, and class, reminding us that spatial identities can both shelter and exclude; Huyssen warns of late-modern cultures of amnesia that aestheticize or erase conflict; and Young demonstrates how memorial forms materialize contested readings of the past. From this angle, “inhabiting time” entails negotiating plural — and sometimes antagonistic — memories, asking designers to make explicit whose histories are being honored, which are silenced, and how atmospheres can repair rather than reproduce exclusion (hooks, 2009; Huyssen, 1995; Young, 1993).

2. Inhabiting Time: Between Body, Place, and Memory

Human experience in the built environment is profoundly influenced by the perception of time, which is not limited to a chronological sequence but is lived in a subjective, continuous, and embodied manner. Time is more than something marked by calendars or clocks: it is inscribed in the body, in gestures, in silences, and in the places we inhabit.

In this context, architecture acts not only as a shelter but also as a medium that shapes — and is shaped by — the temporal experiences of individuals. It is made of enduring presences, of transitions that accumulate, and of atmospheres that hold unspoken memories. Understanding how time is experienced in place is therefore a key to designing environments that recognize the body as a sensitive mediator of duration, permanence, and becoming.

2.1. Lived Time and Bodily Presence

The understanding of time as a lived and embodied experience is central to the phenomenology of authors such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Martin Heidegger, and Henri Bergson.

Merleau-Ponty (1945/2012) argues that time is not an objective entity observed externally, but a lived dimension intertwined with the embodied condition of the subject. For him, the body is more than an instrument of perception — it is the very condition of possibility for experience, through which we perceive temporal continuity as a weaving of past, present, and future.

Heidegger (1927/1962), in turn, introduces the concept of Dasein as being-in-the-world and shows that our existence is always temporally projected: the past is carried as a no-longer-active possibility, the present as the condition for action, and the future as an openness to what may come. Thus, time is understood as an existential — not chronological — structure that shapes the way we dwell in the world.

Bergson (1896/2004) proposes the notion of duration (la durée), defining time as a qualitative, continuous, and indivisible flow, in contrast to the fragmentation imposed by chronological measurement. His distinction between habit memory and image memory is crucial here: the first refers to the automatisms sedimented in bodily action, while the second encompasses the vivid, phenomenal recollection that blends perception and remembrance. In both cases, memory does not separate past and present but fuses them into a single experiential thickness.

This phenomenological lineage finds resonance in contemporary cognitive science through enactivist approaches, which view cognition as emerging from the dynamic coupling between organism and environment. Colombetti (2014), in The Feeling Body, emphasizes that affectivity is not an internal, detached state, but an embodied attunement to the world — a felt orientation that shapes perception, action, and memory. In architectural terms, this implies that the temporality of place is not merely registered by the body but enacted through continuous sensorimotor engagement, where emotions and atmospheres co-constitute lived experience.

These converging perspectives underline that the experience of time is anchored in corporeality. In architecture, this means conceiving design as a way to embrace and enhance the subject’s temporal experience, considering the body as the center of perception and of the inscription of time in place. This inscription is not metaphorical: it is realized concretely in how the body moves, orients itself, pauses, or expands within environments. It is the rhythm of breathing on a staircase, the elongation of silence in a corridor, the warmth of light on a surface at dusk. As Merleau-Ponty (1964/1968, p. 271) suggests, “time is not in front of us like an object, but within us as a vibration” — it pulses through the body and, with it, projects itself into place.

This understanding resonates in design practice when one acknowledges that time does not impose itself on place linearly, but is lived in layers — and architecture can be composed to support these layers: to host rituals, pauses, permanence, and forgetting. A place that recognizes time as experience becomes, in turn, a place capable of cultivating presence.

As Henri Lefebvre (2004) observes in his rhythmanalysis, this temporal experience is never entirely neutral. It unfolds through social rhythms shaped by labor, rest, migration, and acts of resistance, each leaving distinct traces in the built environment. Such rhythms are at once bodily and political, emerging from the organization of the everyday and the tensions embedded in place. A festival reclaiming a street, a market adapting to seasonal flows, or the absence of certain bodies in a public square reveal how time and place are negotiated within relations of power. To engage these rhythms in design is to recognize that temporality is not only a sensory phenomenon but also a social field where inequalities, disputes, and histories of resilience become inscribed.

Understanding time as an embodied experience — enacted through perception, movement, and affective resonance — opens the way to explore how the body acts as a sensitive archive, registering and evoking memories through its continuous interaction with the environment.

3. Embodied Memory as Living Duration

Memory is not a container for past events, but an active, dynamic process continuously shaped and reshaped through the body’s engagement with place. Rather than functioning as the passive reproduction of facts, it operates as an affective-perceptual reconfiguration of experience, fusing past and present into a living, indivisible continuity.

This perspective brings together insights from neuroscience, phenomenology, and philosophy of mind, revealing that architecture can mediate the interplay between remembrance, sensation, and identity.

3.1. The Body as a Sensitive Archive

To speak of the body as a “sensitive archive” is not to suggest a static storehouse of information, but to recognize a living system of traces — dynamic, mutable, and relational — that are constantly enacted in the interaction between organism and environment. In an interview on How Memory Works (2010), Antonio Damasio warns against the misleading analogy of memory as a photograph or a film strip, emphasizing instead that memories are reconstructions, each time shaped by the present bodily and emotional state. They are inherently plastic, conditioned by context and affect, rather than fixed snapshots of the past.

According to Damasio (1999), memories are inseparable from the somatic states linked to lived experience, with the body providing markers that influence perception, decision-making, and recall. The neuroscience of embodied cognition reinforces this view: Gallese and Lakoff (2005) show that conceptual structures are partly grounded in the sensorimotor systems, which means memory itself is organized through the sedimentation of bodily experiences. In this sense, the body does not “store” memories — it composes, activates, and transforms them in every act of remembering.

Varela, Thompson, and Rosch (1991) expand this understanding through the concept of enaction, according to which cognition emerges from the organism’s continuous interaction with its environment. From this standpoint, memory is not an isolated mental content, but a relational phenomenon embedded in lived presence.

In phenomenology, Casey (2000) highlights that memory “dwells” in place: it is carried in gestures, itineraries, and atmospheres, allowing place to act not only as a backdrop but as a co-author of recollection. Catherine Malabou (2008) further develops this by introducing the notion of “plasticity” — the capacity of memory to take and give form, but also to rupture, erase, or reconfigure itself. From this angle, embodied traces are not always restorative; they may preserve wounds, perpetuate exclusions, or reactivate trauma when inscribed into certain spatial conditions. Designing with this awareness entails not only fostering regeneration through affirmative sensory and affective experiences, but also identifying and transforming environments that risk perpetuating harm.

4. Architectures of Temporality: Places that Inscribe Memory

If memory is understood as an embodied and relational phenomenon, it inevitably takes root in the spaces we inhabit. Far from being neutral backdrops, built environments function as surfaces of temporal inscription — places where time leaves visible and invisible marks, and where human experience is etched into matter, light, texture, and atmosphere.

Architecture and time are therefore intrinsically linked. Design language can express function or style, but also rhythm, density, and permanence. As Pallasmaa (2012) observes, the most memorable buildings are those that “accommodate the slow unfolding of life,” allowing time not merely to pass, but to dwell. The materiality of architecture holds the potential to evoke the past, embrace the present, and project the future — not as chronology, but as lived experience.

Building on this, Stanford Anderson argues that architectural memory is not restricted to monuments or emblematic sites. In “Memory in Architecture,” he frames memory as a disciplinary and social operation woven into the ordinary fabric of the built environment; in “Memory Without Monuments: Vernacular Architecture,” he shows how vernacular practices—through continuity of use, craft, and everyday rhythms—sustain temporal bonds as potent as commemorative forms. This widens the lens beyond memorials and re-centers the persistence of the everyday as a vehicle for inscribing time in the built environment (Anderson, 1995, 1999).

James E. Young (1993) reminds us that memory in the public sphere often takes shape through monuments and memorials that embody contested narratives. Far from being neutral, these spaces negotiate whose histories are preserved and whose are marginalized. Similarly, Andreas Huyssen (1995) warns that late-modern cultures tend toward amnesia, aestheticizing memory while obscuring its conflicts. Examples such as Holocaust memorials, post-dictatorship sites of remembrance, and memorials to victims of racial violence illustrate how architecture can serve both as an instrument of repair — fostering collective reflection and reconciliation — and as a mechanism of erasure when reduced to symbolic tokenism. Recognizing this dual potential is essential for a design practice that seeks to engage memory ethically, ensuring that the spatial inscription of time honors its complexity rather than simplifying it.

Peter Zumthor (2006) describes architecture as a “built form of memory,” suggesting that each spatial element — from the sound of footsteps on a wooden stair to the touch of a stone wall — can resonate with deep recollections and sensory echoes. These resonances are not abstract: they manifest in design choices, in how materials age, in how light moves across a surface, in the shadows that change with time.

In this sense, time becomes a material of design. Architecture can create durations, suspensions, transitions, and states of permanence — composing a choreography of experience in which every detail acts as a temporal agent. From this perspective, architecture operates as a mediator between time and experience, serving as a support for memory and existential continuity.

4.1. Materiality, Texture, and Constructive Rhythm

The way time manifests in architecture is closely related to the choice of materials, the way they are crafted, and how they are affected by the passage of days, seasons, and stories. The materiality of a space — its density, porosity, temperature, and weathering — acts as a sensitive skin that records marks, light, shadows, and presences.

Pallasmaa (2012) emphasizes that the tactile essence of architecture, more than its visual image, is what establishes deep connections between space and memory. Materials that transform over time — wood that darkens, stone that wears down, metal that oxidizes — participate in the life of the building as silent witnesses of human presence. This “patina of time” is not a flaw, but a language of permanence — a sensitive form of writing that communicates history, care, and belonging.

Norberg-Schulz (1980), in discussing the concept of genius loci, observes that places acquire identity through their form, but also through their capacity to maintain connections with the continuity of life unfolding within them. The texture of a floor worn by repeated footsteps, the irregularities in the mortar of an old wall, or the reverberating sound in a structure of raw concrete are not formal accidents — they are the ways in which time becomes present.

Crízel (2020) reinforces this perspective by proposing that materiality is also a mediator of spatial empathy and lived time. In this view, the physical elements of architecture go beyond delimiting space — they sensitize it, acting as vectors that connect body, memory, and sensation, especially when arranged according to design principles that value duration and lived experience.

Beyond materials, the very rhythm of the constructive process — whether artisanal or industrial — communicates temporality. A hand-laid masonry wall carries the slowness of accumulated gestures, while a modular system may express a different temporality, more accelerated and fragmented. Architecture, therefore, does not simply resist time: it translates it, curves it, lets it in.

These nuances reveal that matter builds more than form — it builds temporal meaning. And it is precisely these meanings that become most evident in works that embrace aging as part of their poetics.

4.2. Poetics of Permanence

Some architectures house life: they seem to welcome time. There are buildings that move us with their ability to hold silence, to suggest untold stories, and to keep alive the presence of what has passed — even without saying a word. In such spaces, architecture becomes a poetics of permanence, making time a tangible material.

Peter Zumthor (2006) describes this condition by stating that certain buildings “touch the soul” by awakening memories and affections without explicit mediation. One example is the Bruder Klaus Field Chapel, built between 2005 and 2007 in Wachendorf, Germany. With its cast-in-place concrete structure and interior burned by timber, the project expresses introspection, temporality, and archaic materiality. According to Pallasmaa (2012), experiencing such a space activates the atmospheric qualities of architecture as a way of evoking sensory and emotional memory.

In the work of Carlo Scarpa, particularly in the interventions at Castelvecchio Museum (1959–1973, Verona, Italy), time is treated as language. Scarpa does not conceal aging — he celebrates it. He honors the ruin and the juxtaposition of old and new materials in a composition that is artisanal and intentional. As Dal Co and Mazzariol (1984) note, his architecture operates as an archaeology of experience, allowing past and present to coexist as perceptual and affective layers.

Álvaro Siza, in projects such as the Church of Santa Maria (1996, Marco de Canaveses, Portugal), reveals a subtle understanding of permanence. The building, composed of simple geometries and white materials, integrates into its context with humility and precision, suggesting continuity and equilibrium. Frampton (1995) observes that Siza’s architecture is marked by an ethics of place, where time does not impose itself but settles in silence, as part of the landscape.

In the Brazilian context, Lina Bo Bardi offers perhaps one of the most powerful poetics of permanence, especially in the SESC Pompeia project (1977–1986, São Paulo). The architect preserved the old drum factory on the site, integrating it into the new program. Instead of erasing the past, Lina inscribed the vitality of the present into it. According to Arantes (1999), the raw materiality and embrace of imperfections form an aesthetic of resistance and everyday memory.

These examples reveal that when the architect understands memory as something embodied in spatial experience, design ceases to be a formal imposition and becomes an invitation to continuity. As discussed by Crízel and Bocca (2024), architecture that respects time becomes a territory for memory to dwell — not in a nostalgic sense, but as a condition for the present to root itself in sensitive experience.

However, permanence can also serve less benevolent ends. As Eyal Weizman (2017) demonstrates through the work of Forensic Architecture, certain buildings and urban configurations materialize violence, surveillance, and systemic exclusion. In these cases, the solidity of walls and the endurance of forms do not nurture belonging, but rather sustain structures of oppression and historical erasure. Sites such as former detention centers, colonial infrastructures, or segregated urban grids reveal how the architectural inscription of time can fix inequities into the very fabric of place. A critical poetics of permanence, therefore, must confront these realities, seeking design strategies that either transform such sites into platforms for justice and remembrance or disrupt the spatial logics that perpetuate harm.

This affective and temporal inscription of space prepares the ground for another fundamental aspect: the capacity of architecture to evoke emotions and generate lasting bonds between subject and place.

5. Emotion and Continuity: The Affective Experience of Space

The architecture that truly marks our memory is not the one that merely impresses visually, but the one that touches us emotionally. The affective experience of place emerges from the interplay between sensory stimuli, atmosphere, and embodied meanings — activating deep memories and fostering feelings of belonging, comfort, or transcendence.

Clarifying “affect”. In this article, we use affect to name a pre-reflective, relational intensity that attunes bodies and environments before emotion is fully qualified or narrated. Following Massumi, affect operates at a level of pre-personal intensity distinct from emotion, which is already culturally coded and conscious (Massumi, 1995, 2002). In architectural terms, affect is a felt attunement that arises in the encounter between bodies and atmospheres; Brand (2022) calls for a “felt-phenomenology” in which touch, haptic-visuality, and multisensory engagement mediate how places move us. This distinction helps prevent conceptual slippage and grounds our analysis of atmospheres and memory.

Juhani Pallasmaa (2012) notes that the most memorable buildings are those that operate through the integration of the senses — that do not merely “appear,” but are felt. Touch, smell, acoustics, and the variation of light throughout the day: all these elements compose a kind of “emotional setting,” in which the body experiences both the place and itself within it. A skylight filtering light like in a temple, the scent of sun-warmed wood, the muffled echo of footsteps on a stone floor — these are spatial gestures that evoke emotions and register presences.

According to Antonio Damasio (1999), emotions are fundamental to memory processing, as the so-called “somatic markers” connect bodily states to meaningful experiences. Environments that promote sensory well-being or emotional warmth tend to be more easily remembered, as they inseparably engage the body, affect, and cognition.

The notion of atmosphere — thoroughly explored by Gernot Böhme (1993) — further reinforces this affective connection. For him, atmosphere is not simply a static attribute of the environment, but a presence felt between place and subject. A place may feel calm, oppressive, welcoming, or vibrant not only because of its physical dimensions, but also because of how it manifests sensorially. This explains why certain places evoke memories or immediate feelings even without an apparent logical reason.

Steven Holl (2000), in reflecting on the sensory dimension of design, argues that architects must think with the body — and design for lived time. In his works, the variation of light, acoustic properties, and materiality create emotional microclimates that encourage introspection, contemplation, or affective connection with the surroundings.

Crízel and Bocca (2024) propose that the affective experience of place goes beyond materiality — it lies in how place is experienced by the subject through their existential continuity. Affective memory, they suggest, becomes more than the mere recording of an event: it is how that event is sensorially inscribed in the body — through place.

Understanding this emotional dimension of architecture is essential for advancing design practices that not only fulfill functions, but also care for people. Designing for emotion is, above all, designing for the permanence of that which, although invisible, leaves a trace. And in this sense, salutogenic design presents itself as a poetic and ethical response — integrating affective memory, sensoriality, and well-being as essential parts of the very act of designing.

Yet affective attachment to place is not always benign. As bell hooks (2009) points out, “homeplace” can be both a site of empowerment and a space of exclusion, where belonging is defined through boundaries that silence or displace others. Catherine Malabou’s (2008) notion of plasticity further reveals that memory’s capacity to transform can also rupture and erase — the same sensory cues that evoke comfort for some may reactivate trauma for others. Architectural atmospheres, therefore, must be approached critically: a place that fosters emotional resonance for one group might simultaneously embody histories of violence, dispossession, or neglect for another. Designing for affective continuity thus requires an ethics of inclusion, ensuring that the sensorial and mnemonic qualities of place expand rather than limit the spectrum of belonging.

6. Salutogenic Design and the Reinterpretation of Memory in Contemporary Practice

Architecture that embraces well-being as a central value does not merely aim to mitigate illness or discomfort: it cultivates health, connection, identity, and meaning. This is the premise of salutogenic design, a concept derived from the theory of Salutogenesis proposed by medical sociologist Aaron Antonovsky (1996), who argued that health is supported by elements that promote coherence, comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness in everyday experience.

Applied to architecture, salutogenic design proposes that places should foster experiences that stimulate vitality, emotional security, orientation, and belonging. Alan Dilani (2011), founder of the International Academy for Design and Health, asserts that environments designed according to these principles have a direct impact on recovery, disease prevention, and quality of life—particularly when they integrate sensory, symbolic, and relational stimuli.

These stimuli are not generic: they are interwoven with the affective and cultural memory of individuals, activating personal and collective references that favor a sense of continuity. Day (2002), in reflecting on healing environments, argues that a truly therapeutic place is one that embraces the user’s story and resonates with their lived experience. It is not merely about physical comfort, but about symbolic belonging.

This notion of symbolic belonging connects deeply with the idea of existential continuity. Paul Ricoeur (1991), in his work on narrative identity, argues that individuals build coherence in their life trajectory through stories that integrate memories, ruptures, and future projections. In this sense, place can serve as a thread that supports this narrative continuity—especially when aligned with the individual’s sensory and affective memories. In contrast, Marc Augé (1995) warns of the dangers of so-called “non-places”—generic, depersonalized settings lacking historical inscription, which hinder the formation of meaningful bonds and weaken the sense of belonging. Salutogenic design, therefore, moves in the opposite direction, seeking to restore the symbolic and emotional dimension of place.

This discussion becomes even more urgent in light of contemporary vulnerabilities. The COVID-19 pandemic, for instance, strongly revealed the need to rethink built environments as agents of comprehensive care. Homes that became both refuge and confinement, hospitals turned into emotional frontiers, and public spaces emptied—all of these phenomena demonstrated how physical environments affect our emotional state, mental health, and sense of continuity with the world. In times of crisis, transition, or grief, architecture cannot remain neutral. It must participate in processes of symbolic repair—and salutogenic design, by integrating memory, empathy, and affect, offers ways forward.

Crízel (2020) and Crízel & Bocca (2024) deepen this approach by proposing that architecture can act as an agent of memory reinterpretation. Designing with empathy and bodily awareness enables places not only to evoke memories but also to restore interrupted meanings and offer reconnection with what has been lived. In contexts of health, aging, trauma, or life transitions, memory embedded in design acts as a language of care.

Trauma-informed design as a complementary framework. In settings marked by painful or contested memories, trauma-informed design (TID) provides actionable criteria that align closely with salutogenic aims. Drawing from the public-health field’s trauma-informed approach, TID translates core principles—safety; trustworthiness and transparency; peer support; collaboration and mutuality; empowerment, voice, and choice; and cultural, historical, and gender responsiveness—into spatial strategies that reduce re-traumatization and support regulation, agency, and dignity. In practice, this entails combining environmental cues of safety (clear sightlines, refuge-prospect balance, predictable wayfinding), graded privacy and social options, meaningful control over lighting, acoustics, and thermal conditions, and culturally responsive material and narrative expression. Such principles have been formalized by the U.S. behavioral-health framework and widely adopted across sectors.

Evidence-informed design moves. A growing body of interdisciplinary research—scoped through neuroscientific lenses—identifies three domains where TID most strongly converges with evidence: safety and security, control and perceived control, and enriched environments (including nature connection and positive distraction). These domains map onto concrete architectural decisions: entry sequences that signal welcome and predictability; spatial legibility and “no dead ends”; options for retreat and sociality; user-modifiable features (from operable windows to furniture layouts); and multisensory cues that support calm and orientation. While the literature calls for more rigorous, longitudinal studies, current syntheses consistently report alignment between these design moves and improved well-being for populations experiencing homelessness or domestic violence.

Beyond supported housing, TID has informed diverse typologies—from women’s correctional facilities to therapeutic residential care—while also attracting critical scrutiny that is valuable for designers. For example, Jewkes and colleagues argue that trauma-informed services will falter if embedded in architecture whose baseline configuration communicates threat (hostile materials, surveillance-heavy layouts), underscoring that form and program must be ethically coherent.

From principles to cases. Contemporary practice offers applied illustrations: the Hope Street residential community for justice-involved women and children in the U.K. documents a TID process spanning participatory briefing, privacy gradation, and sensory modulation; U.S. practitioner manuals and four-phase toolkits detail design workflows (from cultural–historical context mapping to post-occupancy learning) for permanent supportive housing. These resources translate clinical concepts into room-by-room decisions without losing sight of identity, agency, and cultural specificity.

The application of salutogenic design thus extends far beyond hospitals or clinics. Homes, schools, workplaces, and shared places can also be conceived as territories of existential continuity, where body, time, and place intertwine in symbolic and regenerative ways. By incorporating memory as a design element, environments are created that welcome the subject both in their functionality and in their personal history.

This approach expands the architect’s role as a mediator of technical, emotional, and symbolic experiences. And it is from this expansion that the future paths of architecture emerge—as a mediator between body, time, and memory.

7. Final Considerations

To inhabit time is, ultimately, to inhabit oneself. Throughout this dialogue, we have explored how body, space, and memory intertwine in a lived, embodied, and sensitive temporal experience. Architecture, rather than merely recording time, can inscribe it, receive it, and reinterpret it — becoming both a shelter and a language.

Grounded in phenomenological, neuroscientific, and design-based perspectives, this article has sought to demonstrate that memory is not a passive collection of facts, but a living duration, activated by the body and by the atmospheres of the spaces we inhabit. The sensitive presence of materiality, the texture of surfaces, the constructive rhythm, the movement of light, and the echo of sound — all compose an affective grammar that shapes our perception of time.

We have also identified that architecture can act as a mediator between the lived and the symbolic, between the fleeting moment and permanence. When designed with sensory and empathic awareness, it engages with individual and collective narratives, tends to them, offers continuity, belonging, and openness to becoming.

Salutogenic design emerges in this context as an ethical and poetic design approach — capable of integrating affective memory as part of healing, identity, and symbolic reintegration. Spaces that recognize the body’s story become territories of regeneration — not only physical but also emotional and existential.

Contemporary practice offers significant examples of how these principles unfold beyond the canonical repertoire. The work of MASS Design Group demonstrates how architecture can serve as a vehicle for restorative justice. In the United States, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery confronts the long-suppressed history of racial terror through spatial sequencing, materiality, and inscription that invite public reflection. In Boston, The Embrace memorializes Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King as an inhabitable sculpture that activates the Common as civic ground. In Brazil, the Memorial da Resistência in São Paulo transforms a former political prison into a living archive of memory, preserving marks of past repression and embedding them within a program of cultural dialogue and civic education.

These examples illustrate that salutogenic and memory-informed design is not confined to therapeutic or healthcare contexts; it can also operate as a powerful civic tool, confronting contested histories and cultivating collective resilience. In doing so, it invites designers to acknowledge that the memory embedded in space is never neutral: it can reconcile, but it can also exclude; it can restore, but it can also perpetuate harm. The challenge, therefore, is to design with an awareness of whose narratives are being preserved, whose are absent, and how spatial permanence might foster justice rather than erasure.

This dialogue does not propose a closed methodology, but rather a design attitude that understands time as living matter. An architecture that welcomes gesture, silence, absence, and memory. An architecture that, more than enduring, remains — not in form, but in the way it touches, affects, and continues in the body of those who have lived it.

The challenge that lies ahead for architects, designers, and researchers is to cultivate this subtle form of listening: to design not for the gaze — understood here as a narrow, purely optical stance, distinct from frameworks of surveillance or objectification (cf. Foucault, 1975/1995; Mulvey, 1975) — but for remembrance, for affect, and for the possibility of inhabiting time with meaning. Between body, space, and memory, time does not simply pass — it remains inscribed.

However, such permanence demands renewal and commitment. Looking toward the future, some possibilities emerge as ethical and creative unfoldings of this study. Sensory analysis technologies — such as biosensors — already allow, in both experimental and applied contexts, access to how memory and emotion are activated within space. When used with critical discernment and care, they do not mechanize the project: rather, they can render it even more human.

Moreover, the field of architectural application expands: homes for those in mourning, schools that respect diverse cognitive rhythms, healing spaces that welcome interrupted narratives, environments for physical or emotional rehabilitation, memory centers, and museums attuned to ancestry — all become fertile ground for an architecture that thinks of time as experience.

Yet, as bell hooks (2009), James E. Young (1993), and Eyal Weizman (2017) remind us, engaging with memory in the built environment also means confronting its multiplicity — including narratives that are painful, contested, or historically silenced. Designing for memory thus requires integrating ethics, politics, and care into the creative process, ensuring that spaces become platforms for justice, dialogue, and inclusion rather than sites of erasure or exclusion.

Finally, it is necessary to recognize that this approach also calls for transformation in education. To cultivate architects and designers with phenomenological repertoire, sensitive listening, neuroscientific grounding, and symbolic ethics becomes essential for designing with the awareness that every built space is also a memory constructed.