Designing a mnemotope. Communication Design as interdisciplinary activator of the memory of places

Memory exists not only in a temporal dimension but also in a spatial framework. Places are essential in locating and giving memories directions, and the spatial image, because of its stability, is able to retrieve the past in the present. Over the centuries, the relationship between places and memories has struggled to get a precise and univocal definition, but today it finds its true expression in disciplinary negotiation. Numerous fields of knowledge are involved, from anthropology to the semiotics of space, from photography to architecture, from cultural geography to public history. With its intrinsically interdisciplinary nature, Communication Design offers an alternative approach to the debate, encouraging the reactivation and reconstruction of the memory of places. Identifying the mnemotope as a cultural object of territorial interpretation, communication design can become a translator of the dense mnemotopic network present on the territory. Thus, it favors the mnemotopic passage from an individual memory to a collectively perceived and recognized one, a memory open to public participation.