The City That Disappears
Cities transform at unprecedented pace. Moroccan medinas, old districts, spaces of collective memory — some disappear under construction, others become museified and lose daily life. How to preserve the memory of what was, without freezing what changes?
VR offers a partial but powerful answer: the possibility of reconstituting spaces from testimonies, photographs, archives, and immersing visitors within them.
What VR Enables That Other Media Cannot
Spatial presence: being in a space, not just facing an image. VR activates a spatial perception that photos and video don't produce.
Reconstruction from fragments: combining period photographs, recorded testimonies, architectural plans, and generated elements into a spatial interpretation — always partial, always constructed.
Intergenerational transmission: a child who didn't know a neighbourhood before can experience it. An architecture student can "enter" a demolished building.
Method: From Archive to Experience
1. Gather sources: photos, audio/video testimonies, plans, postcards
2. Spatial modelling: 3D reconstruction (often approximate — this should be acknowledged)
3. Integrate voices: residents' testimonies are the raw material
4. Choose the device: headset (max presence), immersive projection (group access), WebVR (smartphone accessible)
5. Calibrate fidelity: accept incompleteness, signal uncertainties
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