Order and Atmospheric Memory: Cleaning Up the Past, Designing the Future

Abstract

This article is concerned with the relationship between atmosphere and memory in the context of rapid urban development. I explore this relationship by looking to the northeastern fringes of central Stockholm, where a new neighborhood is being constructed in extension of industrial and residential areas long established as integral albeit peripheral parts of the city. Known by its official English-language moniker as Stockholm Royal Seaport, this neighborhood-in-the-works occupies a unique location within the growing city. Meanwhile, the local environment is currently undergoing a process of cleaning up that allows for a multisensorial and imaginative engagement with both past and future. In interrogating this case, I argue that designing for the future has come to entail a curation of the past that obfuscates difference and creates order through atmospheric memory: memory that shapes and is shaped by atmospheres.