Order and Atmospheric Memory: Cleaning Up the Past, Designing the Future

Abstract

This article is concerned with the relationship between atmosphere and memory in the context of rapid urban development. I explore this relationship by looking to the northeastern fringes of central Stockholm, where a new neighborhood is being constructed in extension of industrial and residential areas long established as integral albeit peripheral parts of the city. Known by its official English‐language moniker as Stockholm Royal Seaport, this neighborhood‐in‐the‐works occupies a unique location within the growing city. Meanwhile, the local environment is currently undergoing a process of cleaning up that allows for a multisensorial and imaginative engagement with both past and future. In interrogating this case, I argue that designing for the future has come to entail a curation of the past that obfuscates difference and creates order through atmospheric memory: memory that shapes and is shaped by atmospheres.