Video: AIA,“Celebrating Architecture: Look up”
Spaces impact us; they impose on our bodies, sensually shaping both our perceptual and perceived experiences of the world from the inside out. For example, if you walk into a dimly lit room, there are a number of conscious and unconscious sensations that nudge you toward certain feelings and actions. Will you flip the light switch? Squint your eyes? Leave the room? Affect is the generative capacity of bodies to be impressionable; to feel surrounding energetic environments; it corresponds to non-conscious intensities that produce changes in the state of the body, augmenting or diminishing its capacity to act or be acted upon (Anderson 2009). In memorial architecture, affect is “pushing, pulling, or lifting us to feel, think, or act” in relation to place-based knowledges and narratives (Kraftl & Adey 2005). Affect should not be defined as emotion – instead affect is “both unconscious and semi-conscious interactions with the im/material worlds that inform our present day feelings…” (Micieli-Voutsinas & Person 2021, p. 4)
Affective Heritage denotes an important shift in public learning at places of heritage. Geared towards more experiential, emotional modes of learning for site visitors, this shift in heritage design relies less on didactic texts, ‘official’ institutional narratives, and authoritative rhetoric to shape meaning in spaces of memory. Instead, “affective heritage” aims for visitors to feel meaning as it is generated through embodied and evocative encounters with and within memorial and museum spaces (Micieli-Voutsinas, 2017).
We understand Affective Architectures “as the mnemonic structures that assist in memory and meaning making” at places of heritage (Micieli-Voutsinas & Person, p. 2). These architectures are focused on creating haptic, kinesthetic, and visceral experiences for site visitors, which are vital for conveying and generating emotional encounters within heritage landscapes.
Since 2017, Dr. Person and Dr. Micieli-Voutsinas have collaborated to develop a network of researchers studying affective architectures in heritage contexts, including museums, memorials, sites of trauma, and other culturally important sites. Their collective work has resulted in a book of the same title (Routledge, 2020), an ongoing collaboration with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), and funding and equipment from the University of Oklahoma, Skidmore College, and USHMM in support of this work. Meanwhile, they have applied for additional funding from NSF, and have been invited to edit a second international volume on “Heritage, Bodies, and Senses.” This website draws together and tells the story of the combined work and research trajectory of these collaborators for a broad scholarly audience.
Dr. Jacque Micieli-Voutsinas is an Assistant Professor in the Graduate Program of Museum Studies at the University of Florida, Gainesville. Her research program explores the evocative power of places of difficult heritage to cultivate public emotion (such as fear, empathy, and hope) and generate a collective sense of community in the wake of traumatizing events.
Dr. Angela M. Person is Director of Research Initiatives and Strategic Planning for the Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture at the University of Oklahoma and lecturer in the OU Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability. Dr. Person’s research looks at relationships between social and material conditions and individual, community, and public identities.
Since 2017, Dr. Person and Dr. Micieli-Voutsinas have collaborated to develop a network of researchers studying affective architectures in heritage contexts, including museums, memorials, sites of trauma, and other culturally important sites. Their collective work has resulted in a book of the same title (Routledge, 2020), an ongoing collaboration with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), and funding from the University of Oklahoma, Skidmore College, and USHMM in support of this work. Meanwhile, they have applied for additional funding from NSF, and have been invited to edit a second international volume on “Heritage, Bodies, and Senses.” This website draws together and tells the story of the combined work and research trajectory of these collaborators for a broad scholarly audience.
Dr. Jacque Micieli-Voutsinas is an Assistant Professor in the Graduate Program of Museum Studies at the University of Florida, Gainesville. Her research program explores the evocative power of places of difficult heritage to cultivate public emotion (such as fear, empathy, and hope) and generate a collective sense of community in the wake of traumatizing events.
Dr. Angela M. Person is Director of Research Initiatives and Strategic Planning for the Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture at the University of Oklahoma and lecturer in the OU Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability. Dr. Person’s research looks at relationships between social and material conditions and individual, community, and public identities.
Book | Affective Architectures: More-than-Representational Geographies of Heritage
An interdisciplinary collection of essays focused on a diverse series of heritage sites.
Book | Affective Heritage and the Politics of Memory After 9/11
Examines the curation of memory and trauma at the 9/11 Memorial Museum.
Book | The Care and Keeping of Cultural Facilities
A guidebook written to provide guidance on how to best care for cultural facilities and museums.
