3. EXCAVATION OF EDINBURGH 6

17 |Zaid Prasla, Holyrood Park (Salisbury Crags): A mnemonic device for the city.

18 |Zaid Prasla, The Geddes Gardens: A Forest in the city. The vegetal world which exists today in the city of Edinburgh is restricted with clear boundaries segregating the urban world from the realms of plants. In order for us to return to this world of the ‘Ancient Caledonian Forest’, the threshold which separates the built environment which we as human inhabit from the natural where the vegetal world thrives needs to be eliminated to move more seamlessly between the two realms and in doing so, rebuild a strong interdependency between the urban and the vegetal world, a new urban world which is more open and transparent towards the environment. 20 The archaeological excavations of the city aims to rebuild this relationship with the forest tracing the lost ecological layer in the excavation which holds memories of the old forest and the organic materials like soil which is retrieved in the process acts as the same ground for the introduction of the ‘New Caledonian Forest’.

Patrick Geddes offers another perspective to the vegetal world and its relationship to the realms of men. The renowned Geddes Gardens (see Fig. 18) in the Old Town of Edinburgh stand as a testament to Geddes’s belief creating of a ‘real human life’ which can only be achieved around a garden, a space for communities to bring about social reforms and in doing so transforming the slums in the neglected Old Town into a space for people and tackling social and environmental inequalities in the city.21 Through the intervention of Patrick Geddes, the Old Town was saved from itself turning further into a state of slums and diseases. The gardens encouraged the participation of the communities and the council in maintaining this new vegetal world and persuaded social reforms to produce local food commodities through gardening vegetables and fruits in the garden at a community level rather than at a personal level. This new vegetal world thus broke the artificial edge that separated the two realms of living and encouraged a growth of the human world around the vegetal one rather than the other way around as Michael Marder mentions about the need to reorganise our lives around the vegetal to survive and flourish.

20 Michael Marder, in ‘ A Recovery of the Amazing Diversity of Natural Presence’, and also see, ‘ Cultivating our Sensory Perceptions’, in Through Vegetal Being, p. 150 and p. 156.

21 Jan Woudstra, in ‘Designing the Garden of Geddes: The Master Gardener and the Profession of Landscape Architecture’, in Landscape and Urban Planning Vol. 178. (Sheffield: Department of Landscape, The University of Sheffield, 2018) Accessed on June 30, 2021. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ article/pii/S0169204618304079

4. A CITY OF MEMORIES: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

4.1. DIAGRAMS: A GENERATIVE DEVICE

In order to excavate the ground and to trace and superimpose time through multiple layers of history, a new urban methodology needs to be employed. A technique is required which allows to study the city as a palimpsest of memory. Diagrammatic study of history therefore becomes significant in generating the traces of the past from the earliest human settlements to the recent urban development in the city by entering time at strategic moments and highlighting important architectural moments in history which will in present day define the excavations in the city and also trace the time when the ‘Ancient Caledonian Forest’ was at its peak (4,000 B.C.) to the present-day city where the forest is fragmented and exists only in the form of Holyrood Park and the Water of Lieth.22

In contrary to diagrams, drawings are mere representational tools such as plans, elevations and sections which can be seen as literal mnemonic devices of the final product which lacks the process behind achieving that product. Therefore, it can be seen why the architects of the neo avant-garde period of 1960s such as Peter Eisenman who are critical in their thinking and design processes preferred the techniques of diagramming and cartographical studies over drawings as diagrams for architects like him are a tool of experimentation and enquiry where the final product has no fixed conclusion to it, and it allows the study to open up a dialogue for future explorations.23 In other words, while drawings represent plans diagrams consists of historical traces in form of invisible lines which are inked later in the current present and the future acting as a mediator in generation of space and time.24

According to Gilles Deleuze, a diagram is seen as an unstable structure but a structure that also follows a serialisation and prescribed arrangement of diagrammatic systems as one moves from one diagram to the next, new maps are drawn that hold arguments of change and resistance to the existing structure as superimposition of layers between ground and the figure. In other words, while the architectural diagrams are seen as a visual archive of data, Deleuze sees the technique of diagrams as an abstract study in form of maps and cartography that is seen as both visual as well as expressive. According to R.E. Somol, Deleuze’s understanding of diagrams is both abstract and concrete, that is, something that can be found in the process and something that can be manipulated to create an entirely new archival system.25 Eisenman prefers this ‘superposition’ of diagrams where there is no stability in the ground (artificial) allowing the architecture (figure) and the ground to oscillate between one another.26 The diagram acts as a surface which receives the inscriptions of the past allowing us the ability to study, preserve and erase traces as needed and in doing so generate new alternative architectural forms from the repressed memory of the trace.27

Jacques Derrida’s conception of Freud’s double-sided Mystic Writing Pad which is articulated as a series of multiple layers or surfaces where memories of the layers underneath the outermost layer are traced and retained. This conception allows to generate a palimpsest of memory where history is preserved, etched, and even erased through time in order to generate new figures.28

22 See Peter Eisenman and R.E. Somol, in ‘Dummy Text, or the Diagrammatic Basis of Contemporary Architecture’, in Diagram Diaries. (London: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 1999). p. 7-8.

23 Mark Dorrian, , in ‘Architecture’s Cartographic Turn’, in Figures de la Ville et Construction des Savoirs: Architecture, Urbanisme, Geographic. Ed. F. Pousin. (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2005). p. 61-69.

24 Peter Eisenman and R.E. Somol, in ‘Peter Eisenman: An Original Scene of Writing’, in Diagram Diaries. p. 27-28.

25 Ibid. p. 29- 30. 26 Ibid. p. 30.

27 Ibid. p. 32- 33.

28 Ibid. p. 33- 34.

4. A CITY OF MEMORIES: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

4.2. EDINBURGH: A DIAGRAMMATIC STUDY OF ITS LOVING METROPOLITAN LANDSCAPE

The following section intends to study the city of Edinburgh through a similar concept of a palimpsest of memory where the city becomes a transparent surface where history is etched, and preserved as it progresses through time. The archival system of tracing the city of Edinburgh is similar to Freud’s concept of a double-sided Mystic Writing Pad and Eisenman’s experimentation of the project ‘Moving Arrows, Eros, and Other Errors’29 articulating layers of memory underneath the present layer inscribing history and the layer of immanence (future) even as the traces are erased permanently as the city grows through time.

Therefore in order to articulate each layer of presence, absence, and immanence distinctly, colours are employed to each of the following layers in each map where gold represents the layer of presence, grey represent the layer of absence or memory, and dotted lines are used to identify the layer of immanence or future which is yet to come as show in Fig.19.

29 Refer, Peter Eisenman, Moving Arrows, Eros, and Other Errors: An Architecture of Absence. Also, refer to Peter Eisenman and R.E. Somol, in ‘Peter Eisenman: An Original Scene of Writing’, in Diagram Diaries. p. 33- 34.

19 |Zaid Prasla, A Palimpsest of Memory: The City of Edinburgh, 1851 A.D. showing the layers of presence, absence, and immanence

4,000 B.C.

The ‘Ancient Caledonian Forest’ flourished in Scotland around this time. It was a home of variety of plant species, marshlands, peats, and shrubs.

500 A.D.

As the human civilisation flourished in the city, the forest was slowly cut down to make way for new farms and homes for the growing population.

1450 A.D.

The medieval town was surrounded by the defensive King’s Wall along the outer periphery. During this time, Cowgate and Grassmarket located in the valley below the High Street became a thoroughfare to bring in agricultural products and cattles to the market.

1742 A.D.

A secondary defensive wall was hastily erected after the Battle of Flodden to protect the Cowgate and Grassmarket area which were located outside the protection of King’s Wall.

1787 A.D.

As the Old Town became relatively unhabitable for many, the demand for a new town grew leading to the development of a New Town across the Loch. The North Bridge was constructed in 1775 connecting New Town to Old Town.

1817 A.D.

The South Bridge was constructed in the year 1788 demolishing three of the poorest neighbourhoods in Cowgate, that is the Niddry’s Wynd, Peebles Wynd and Marlin’s Wynd connecting the New Town further to the university.

1851 A.D.

The Waverly Railway Station was constructed in the place of ‘Nor Loch’ and The Mound was constructed over the Garden further connecting the New Town to the Old Town. The Mound in turn became a site for the iconic RSA Building and the Scottish National Gallery.

PRESENT DAY

As the city reached the present day, it becomes evident that the forest which once covered the city was lost and now exists in a fragmented memory in form of Holyrood Park and the Water of Leith. Edinburgh’s ground still can be seen holding these historical memories which are waiting to be rediscovered.

2050 A.D. (THE FUTURE CITY)

The year is 2050 A.D. It is assumed the city has discovered the archive buried with the city of the past (2020 A.D.). The document is created to provide the city the immediate sites of excavation along the Cowgate that is, Grassmarket, George IV Bridge, South Bridge, and Holyrood Park with other potential sites that can be explored in the near future.