MARIE SALDAÑA

I explore the borderlands of history, data, design. I am currently an assistant professor of cultural heritage informatics at the University of Arizona.

I am updating my site, please check back soon!

In the meantime, visit the website of my current research project: Taming the Wild Horse Desert

Contact

INTERIOR AS ARCHIVE

BACK

“Temple of Time” by Emma Willard (1846)

Teaching, Design Studio
Fall 2023
School of Interior Architecture
College of Architecture & Design
University of Tennessee - Knoxville

What are the stories hidden in interiors, and how can these stories be preserved and told to future generations? Can we "read" an interior like a history or a memoir? This studio investigated the idea of the interior as an archive of memory that changes and evolves over time. We visited local archives, museums and historic sites such as the Blount Mansion and East Tennessee History Center, and in the process we explored how the practices of everyday life shape our spaces with the goal of enhancing design practice through an understanding of the entanglements of things and people in their material, practical, and social contexts.

Third-yeartudents were tasked with designing a mobile, living archive for a ghost town. They chose and researched a site and learned why it had been abandoned, what kind of stories and artefacts the place holds, and what meanings it might have for living communities. They explored the dual requirements of storage and display in a design for a repurposed warehouse that can host itinerant archives like the one they created for their ghost town.