Synchroni[CITY]

Situated in the heart of Glasgow, Synchroni[city] is an attempt to give form to a public cultural quarter. Its typological orientation conveys a restored interpretation to the function of the market. With its emergence it seeks to revive a version of the classical Agora, a public place of concentrated cultural activity and social encounter.

Studying the interwoven states of time, memory and space in the context of a territorial realm, Glasgow becomes an urban canvas, where hidden narratives begin to unfold. Investigating the origins of a place, under a wider frame of reference, outlines the city’s spatial, cultural, political and social development over the past centuries, and identifies prominent features and events that got buried under the rapid pace of urbanization. The exploration of all three states of time as interwoven realities, is expressed through a series of civic structures that seek to empower collective identity through the trading of ideas and public consolidation. The quarter is composed of three main structures, each one reflecting a temporal state of society, through the acts of recollection, reflection and public consolidation. The structure of remembrance, takes the form of an archive of the lost city, containing records of the city’s past that got lost as the city expanded. From physical elements to states of societal uprise, it restores the public memory of the city. The second object of study is a vessel of public reflection. The hall of hidden narratives rises as a mirror of the city’s terrain assembled in brick and exhibits the product of remembrance in tangible form. It is a symbol of materialization of expressive intuition in the form of public art. Proceeding to the final section the spatial sequence concludes with the peoples’ forum. It is a place for public deliberation taking the merged form of an auditorium and an arcade. A modern cathedral that enables social interaction through the stages of observation on the dialectics of present reality, debate and future contemplation. All the structures are connected through a central amphitheater and signify the interwoven states of memory and social evolution. The synthesis itself was designed to form a precedent for a local quarter that would be situated in every county of Scotland, with the prospect of their interconnection, ensuing that social structure is established under a system that transcends from the citizen, to its local region, to the greater nation.