Introduction

The sentimental feeling for the past (space or time) has some unique features in architecture. One can feel nostalgia for particular spatial experiences of the past, or for some kind of ambiance, if they are missing. Alternatively, space may provoke spatiotemporal travels in our minds that shake our sensorium and challenge the linear sequence of time. Due to its material condition, architecture can firmly connect us with the present, or it can disrupt our feeling of being in the here and now. Furthermore, the feeling of longing may also tie in to how architecture is practised, not just how it is experienced. Architects feel nostalgia in specific ways and, more specifically, in a way that is closely related to the status of labour in societal praxis. During modernity, we have witnessed different forms of architectural nostalgia: architects have experienced nostalgia both for the past and for the future. History and technology have both fuelled these temporal movements. Nonetheless, in a discipline that aspires to eternity, as architecture traditionally has done, nostalgia is a usual suspect closely related to another mood, cultural decadence:

If it were not for the mention of cinematography, and if we substituted ‘novels’ for ‘movies’, this quote could have been written in the late 19th century instead of just a few months ago. The quote talks about a kind of decadence engendered by phenomena like the exhausting effect of the tyranny of novelty, the lack of moral leadership, and a nihilism characteristic of bleak individuals who have left their youth far behind them. The text as a whole exudes nostalgia for a form of society that is the opposite of the one it describes: that is, energetic, young, fresh and dynamic.