The snippet selected from Unit 1: Methods was taken from the Methods of Investigating brief. I started to collect a catalogue of Maker’s Marks within Somers Town in London. Within the context of this studio project, The Maker’s Mark was defined as an architectural feature that has a human-made quality to it, and displays a level of craftsmanship that is often overlooked in contemporary building practice. My process of identifying, collecting and cataloguing these Maker’s Marks lacked a rigorous system, therefore I wanted to return to Somers Town to analyse the area in more depth.
During Methods of Investigating, I explored a line of enquiry which focused on the tension between urban regeneration and the disappearance, and regeneration, of Maker’s Marks. After returning to Malcolm J. Holmes’s (1985) Somers Town: A Record of Change, I started to considered whether spatial history can be fully erased through urban regeneration, or if history becomes layered through the process urban regeneration. To explore this idea further, I shifted my line of enquiry away from The Maker’s Mark and toward the concept of architectural palimpsest.
Palimpsest is defined by: 1. a very old text or document in which writing has been removed and covered or replaced by new writing, 2. something such as a work of art that has many levels of meaning, types of style, etc. that build on each other (‘Palimpsest’, 1998). The term palimpsest has been applied to an urban context in recent architectural conversation discourse. In Arquitectura Viva (2022), palimpsest is defined as ‘evanescent traces, from the diachronic superpositions of buildings or streets to the faded remains of a sign or writing on a party wall, (that) tell stories about the lifestyles and concerns of past dwellers’.
To begin to untangle the layers of history within the urban environment of Somers Town, I returned to the site to observe examples of palimpsest. These phenomenons were indexed into seven distinct categories: signage, ornamentation, brickwork, metalwork, mural, addition, and fixing. Drawing inspiration from Robert Frank’s (2009) Seven Stories, the publication took the form of seven individual perfect-bound booklets which slotted into an open-ended sleeve. The publication amplified the indexed system used to categorise the examples of palimpsest within Somers Town.
Reference List:
Arquitectura Viva (2022) Ghost Signs. Urban Palimpsests. Available at: https://arquitecturaviva.com/articles/ghost-signs (Accessed: 15 April 2026).
Frank, R. (2009) Seven Stories. Gottingen: Steidl.
Holmes, M. J. (1985) Somers Town: A Record of Change. London: London Borough of Camden Libraries and Arts Department.
‘Palimpsest, n. 1’ (1998) in Cambridge Dictionary. Available at:https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/palimpsest (Accessed: 15 April 2026).
‘Palimpsest, n. 2’ (1998) in Cambridge Dictionary. Available at:https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/palimpsest (Accessed: 15 April 2026).
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