The territory as a palimpsest

• Notion of Palimpsest

The palimpsest means an object that is constituted by a dynamic of (destruction/reconstruction), while keeping the history of the old traces. It’s about sedimentation and stratification of layers of renewal or substitutions by traces inscribed on the soil and in the walls but also in the collective memory.

• Notion of territory as Palimpsest

The history of city territories is improved by their successive layers, the remodelling of their monuments, natural elements and additions that bear witness to all periods. From antiquity to the present day, spatial designers have reconsidered the structures of their predecessors by recomposing them or by taking up pre-existing urban and architectural themes. The territory is composed by slow sedimentation of forms, layouts, typologies, routes, memories, uses with collective consensus on urban and architectural forms and typologies. So that, the territories of cities are built, destroyed and rebuilt.

Imaginary territory, Cross section of a tree

To illustrate the territory as a palimpsest, we conduct an experiment based on the interpretation of a cross-section of a tree to hilight the fact that the territory works in layers, rewrites itself over time and constantly reinvents itself.