Building memories
Sally Gales
‘We cannot remember without architecture.’*
It was an ordinary spring day in Glasgow. In less than an hour, grey skies conquered a sun-drenched morning, rain misted the air, and the wind bit at anyone unlucky enough to find themselves outside. Seema was one of those unfortunates. She crossed her arms and turtled into her coat. It’d been a risk to wear her new mustard jacket, but she was so tired of that black down monstrosity she’d hid behind all winter, and besides, the weather had promised sun all day. She darted into the petrol station on the corner and made herself a peppermint tea. Clears the mind and the soul her mom always said. Seema hoped it might clear the weather.
‘Last day Seem?’
‘Yup.’ She pushed a pound coin past the plexiglass barrier and towards the purple haired cashier. In a rare moment of impulse, she also snatched a Yorkie bar from the row of sweets to her left. It was the last brand she’d had left to try. She held it up for Morag to add to her tab. ‘A celebration for later,’ she said.
‘You do know those aren’t for girls, don’t you?’
Seema looked between the chocolate bar and Morag, not sure what she’d done wrong.
Morag laughed. ‘It was a huge campaign when they first came out. There were adverts on the telly and the bar had it printed right there on the wrapping: “It’s Not for Girls.”’
‘What?!’
‘I know. Mental, right? I think they were just having a laugh, but can you imagine the scandal it’d cause if they tried something like that today?’ She pushed the pound back towards Seema. ‘That’ll be my last bit of Scottish trivia for you…and my treat.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t.’
But Morag wouldn’t take no for an answer.
‘Take care Seem, and if you ever come by this way again, don’t be a stranger.’
Seema nodded and waved good-bye to the closest she’d come to a friend since arriving in Glasgow three months ago.
‘Old buildings are like memories you can touch…’**
In the five minutes it’d taken Seema to walk from the petrol station to the entry of the building, the weather shifted once again: this time into sheets of rain. She clutched her bag to her chest and ran…well, she ran as fast as one can when one is carrying a scalding cup of tea in one’s other hand, so that by the time she burst through the doors, she was properly soaked from head to foot.
Seema wrung out her hair and clothes over the black entry mat the contractors had left behind and admired the main entrance hall of the converted building. Reclaimed oak planks along the floor warmed the space despite the weather. Wooden paneling painted the same white-grey as the walls created a contemporary touch. And a plaster rose and hanging light fixture, neither original to the architecture, adorned the ceiling. It was hard to believe this had once been an asylum. A fact the developers took advantage of by omitting it from their advertisements.
Seema slipped her headphones into her ears and grabbed her phone.
Morning. Last day!! Booking flight home tonight!!! 😎
She pressed send, picked a playlist off Spotify, and walked toward the elevators.
She thought about the three floors and seventy-four units she’d already checked – not including hallways and stairwells. The last fifteen units remaining. A bacon, egg and cheese sandwich on an everything bagel from her favorite corner shop. And her last exchange with Morag.
Seema’s thoughts snagged and got caught in a loop. She conjured up different scenarios where a different Seema wouldn’t need to say good-bye because her and Morag had already been hanging out for weeks now. She pretended that she’d invited to meet Morag at the restaurant on the corner after they were both done with their work. She imagined slipping her a piece of paper with her number on it.
Then, just before the elevator doors slid shut, a man walked past.
‘…the process of building memories in to the built space is an ongoing process…’***
Seema burst out of the elevators.
‘Hello?’ Her voice echoed in the emptiness. ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’
No one answered.
She’d already had an excruciatingly long elevator ride up and back down again to run through the different scenarios: It’d been a trick of the light. The result of a bad night’s sleep. An overactive imagination. A contractor who’d forgotten a tool. A stranger who’d wandered in to get out of the rain.
Seema had come up with every logical possibility, but it didn’t stop the chill that ran down her back or the goosebumps that took up residence along her arms.
‘Hello?’ she squeaked.
The ground floor had twenty-eight units. She could probably check them all in about fifteen minutes. If there was someone around, she could ask them to leave. If there wasn’t…
The elevator dinged impatiently behind her.
It probably was just a figment of her imagination.
No use wasting time.
The sooner she finished, the sooner she could leave.
Seema reboarded the elevator, but this time, as the doors shut, she stared down at the remaining punch list items left between her and the end of her day.
‘…places of memory or lieux de mémoire refer to those places where “memory crystallizes and secretes itself…’****
The first unit was always the worst. Her skin crawled as she inspected every wall, molding, flooring, ceiling, fixture, cabinet, window and door in every room and hallway. As she went along, she added a check mark next to the items that passed inspection or wrote a note beside those who would need some more work. Thankfully, she was able to use more green checks than notes and after about an hour, she was done.
Seema walked across the hall to unit D2 and started the process all over again. By this point, though, her nerves no longer screamed at the monotony of the task. Autopilot finally clicked on, and she methodically drifted through the flat in a hyper-aware daze.
Check.
Door frame to master bedroom chipped.
Check. Check.
Paint in hall needs a touch-up.
Check. Check. Check.
Light fixture in bathroom not working.
Seema finished her work in flat D2 and went straight into D3.
She repeated the process over and over and over again, until her stomach grumbled loud enough to be heard over the song playing in her ears. She checked the time, 12:45pm, and looked through her punch list. She’d completed seven flats. Almost halfway done. Either way it was time for lunch.
Seema traced her steps back to the central towers and slipped into flat D5. She walked up the stairs to the unit’s second floor and onto a sprawling open-plan living, dining, kitchen space with three, floor to ceiling windows that looked out over the trees to Glasgow beyond and the rain pelting the glass.
Seema sat before the portal. She pulled a ham sandwich from her bag, when movement in the glass’s reflection caught her eye. A figure in a white coat was walking down the stairs.
She spun around. ‘Hey!’
The figure was gone.
She threw her lunch in her bag and ran down the stairs.
‘Hello? Who’s there? This is a closed site. You shouldn’t be in here. Hello?’
Seema burst out of the flat and stopped in the hall. She turned around in a circle and continued to call out. She went back into the flat and searched every room. There was no one else there.
‘Architecture not only captures our memories but also has an impact on our reasoning and making sense of the world around us.’*****
Seema didn’t know whether or not she believed in ghosts, but it didn’t matter. Ghosts or not, she had a job to finish.
Forgoing lunch, she plowed through the rest of the flats. She focused on dents in plaster and light fixtures with missing covers and ignored hints of movement from out of the corner of her eyes. Seema put on the happiest, poppiest playlist she could find and worked in time with the beat. She sang and danced her way through seven more flats without another incident.
Then the music died.
‘Oh, come on. Not now.’ She tapped at her ear.
Nothing changed.
She pulled out one of her earbuds and a little green light blinked from atop its stem.
‘No…Nonono. Please no.’ Seema rummaged around in her bag until she found her phone but when she pulled it out, the bright, comforting light of her lock screen did not greet her. She pressed the power button anyways, but it was no use. Her phone was dead.
Seema took a deep breath. It was unfortunate but it would be ok. She only had one more flat to check. Fifteen to twenty more minutes and she’d walk out of this building forever. Pulling her shoulders back, she reached out to open the door but as soon as she touched the handle a loud CRACK echoed throughout the hall.
People filled the space.
There was a woman in a dress with a white apron over it. Another with an outfit Seema had only seen in old movies. Contractors with safety helmets. A group of teens sneaking by on tip toe.
Seema went cold.
She pressed herself against a wall as a man in a brown coat and fedora walked past…no, walked through her.
It was enough.
She ran for the fire exit.
Seema did her best to dodge and weave past the growing crowds of people but didn’t hesitate to barrel straight through the apparitions when they blocked her exit. She burst through the door, ran down the stairs and tore out into the main lobby. There were even more of those things crowding this space.
The building groaned.
More people from the past and present, young and old, male and female, popped into place. They walked, talked, laughed, and cried and yet they made no sound. They passed through each other, unaware.
Seema’s lungs couldn’t take in enough air. She gasped and took a step forward, straight into a pair of nurses.
They didn’t pay her any attention.
Seema waded through the sea of ghosts, one step at a time. She made it halfway across the space. The edge of the doorframe was in sight. She increased her pace. Seema made it all the way to the edge of the black, entry mat when suddenly she appeared in front of herself.
Ghost Seema hid within a floor-length black down coat. Her hair was shorter, and it kept slipping out from behind her ear. She bit her lip and crossed her arms in front of her chest.
Seema recognized that version of herself. It was her from her first day on the job.
Ghost Seema pulled out her phone and took a selfie before deleting it. She typed something out for Twitter but changed her mind about that too. She pushed that annoying piece of hair behind her ear and finally sent a text to her parents before putting her phone away.
Seema touched the bobby pin holding her hair in place.
Nothing had changed. She never changed. She’d been in a different country for three months and she was still texting her parents because she didn’t have anyone else to talk to.
Her past self looked up, and for a second, Seema swore she was looking right at her. Then she smiled, full of hope. Hope for the future and the adventure she was going to have. And she marched through Seema into the throng of past memories milling about the hall.
Seema walked out of the building. She didn’t look back at the crack that split the façade straight down the middle or the stream of memories that poured out of it. She didn’t make a note of it for the contractors or take a picture of it for her boss. Seema walked in the rain, away from the past, to the petrol station on the corner.
Epigraphs from:
* Remembering With Architecture marktoddy
** Why Do Old Places Matter? Memory Preservation Forum
*** House : A Collection of Memories Mindspace
**** The Place of Memory and Memory of Place Interdisciplinary Research Foundation
***** Spaces and Memories Rethinking the Future
Commentary
When I was first approached to take part in this project, I was instantly drawn towards Gartnavel’s ruined architecture. Having recently completed a DFA in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow on Dead Spaces (ruins that are forgotten and thus unseen), I toyed with the idea of contributing a creative non-fiction essay to the project. I’d visited the site in 2019 so I was familiar with the buildings but whereas in my previous work I was able to enter the ruined sites, Gartnavel Asylum was inaccessible. As a result, I decided to shift gears and contribute a speculative fiction piece inspired by the architecture and its history.
I read Simpson & Brown’s conservation audit from 2009 in which they proposed converting the Asylum’s old buildings into housing. Before coming to Scotland, I worked as an architect and before that I earned my Master’s in Adaptive Reuse of Architecture. I was familiar with the idea of adaptation as a means of preservation, but I was plagued by the idea of architecture retaining its memories, no matter how many different faces it takes on. During my Master’s course, I had a professor who claimed that architecture is created not just from the brick, mortar and steel but also through the memories that we imbue within it. As an asylum, the architecture was witness to a range of emotions both extreme and mundane and if it was to be converted into housing, it would continue absorbing the day-to-day of its new inhabitants’ lives. I wondered if there was a limit to the amount of memory architecture could contain.
I read different articles on memory in place, place memory, and memories in architecture and I played with different ideas in my head. After looking through the Wellcome Collection’s ‘Register of Physical Condition’ records of Gartnavel, I had an idea to make the asylum a ‘patient’ that is being assessed after being overburdened by the memories. I recreated the records the asylum used to admit patients and started to tell the architecture’s story but that line of creativity didn’t feel right, so I turned to the more traditional form of fiction.
For this work, a young architect is doing a final walk through of the now converted housing project. I focused on the protagonist’s internal struggles as she carries out her job, unaware of the building’s internal condition. Speculative fiction allowed me to explore the idea of over-burdening architecture and fiction gave me a character to ground my focus. I didn’t want to leave my research aside, and so I decided to hybridize my story by including quotes from my research. My aim was to hint at the final event but also leave the reader considering what memories they might be leaving in the architecture they occupy.
References:
Antrolia, Khyati. Spaces and Memories RTF | Rethinking the Future, 27 Sept. 2021, https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/fresh-perspectives/a5017-spaces-and-memories/
House : A Collection of Memories Mindspace, 15 May 2018, https://mindspacearchitects.wordpress.com/2016/08/22/house-a-collection-of-memories/
marktoddy. Remembering With Architecture 8late, 3 Oct. 2012, https://8late.wordpress.com/2012/09/09/remembering-with-architecture/
The Place of Memory and Memory of Place, Interdisciplinary Research Foundation, https://memory.lcir.co.uk
Why Do Old Places Matter? Memory Preservation Forum: Higher Logic, LLC, 4 Dec. 2013, https://forum.savingplaces.org/blogs/forum-online/2013/12/04/why-do-old-places-matter-memory
[Gartnavel Royal Hospital: Conservation Audit (of 1843 buildings) compiled by Simpson & Brown Architects for commissioning clients NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (July 2009)]
Originally from South Florida, Sally Gales graduated from the University of Glasgow with a Doctorate of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Before pursuing her doctorate, she worked as an architect, and she utilises her knowledge of built space to inform the worlds she creates in her speculative fiction. Her short stories have appeared in a variety of publications, such as New Writing Scotland 39, and she recently won third place in Faber Children’s ‘Imagined Futures’ Prize. Her debut young-adult, science fantasy novel is about a girl striving to find her place within a sentient, indoor city until she befriends the one species off-limits to humans. Sally lives in Glasgow with her fiancé and their large, sooky greyhound.
Building memories
Sally Gales
‘We cannot remember without architecture.’*
It was an ordinary spring day in Glasgow. In less than an hour, grey skies conquered a sun-drenched morning, rain misted the air, and the wind bit at anyone unlucky enough to find themselves outside. Seema was one of those unfortunates. She crossed her arms and turtled into her coat. It’d been a risk to wear her new mustard jacket, but she was so tired of that black down monstrosity she’d hid behind all winter, and besides, the weather had promised sun all day. She darted into the petrol station on the corner and made herself a peppermint tea. Clears the mind and the soul her mom always said. Seema hoped it might clear the weather.
‘Last day Seem?’
‘Yup.’ She pushed a pound coin past the plexiglass barrier and towards the purple haired cashier. In a rare moment of impulse, she also snatched a Yorkie bar from the row of sweets to her left. It was the last brand she’d had left to try. She held it up for Morag to add to her tab. ‘A celebration for later,’ she said.
‘You do know those aren’t for girls, don’t you?’
Seema looked between the chocolate bar and Morag, not sure what she’d done wrong.
Morag laughed. ‘It was a huge campaign when they first came out. There were adverts on the telly and the bar had it printed right there on the wrapping: “It’s Not for Girls.”’
‘What?!’
‘I know. Mental, right? I think they were just having a laugh, but can you imagine the scandal it’d cause if they tried something like that today?’ She pushed the pound back towards Seema. ‘That’ll be my last bit of Scottish trivia for you…and my treat.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t.’
But Morag wouldn’t take no for an answer.
‘Take care Seem, and if you ever come by this way again, don’t be a stranger.’
Seema nodded and waved good-bye to the closest she’d come to a friend since arriving in Glasgow three months ago.
‘Old buildings are like memories you can touch…’**
In the five minutes it’d taken Seema to walk from the petrol station to the entry of the building, the weather shifted once again: this time into sheets of rain. She clutched her bag to her chest and ran…well, she ran as fast as one can when one is carrying a scalding cup of tea in one’s other hand, so that by the time she burst through the doors, she was properly soaked from head to foot.
Seema wrung out her hair and clothes over the black entry mat the contractors had left behind and admired the main entrance hall of the converted building. Reclaimed oak planks along the floor warmed the space despite the weather. Wooden paneling painted the same white-grey as the walls created a contemporary touch. And a plaster rose and hanging light fixture, neither original to the architecture, adorned the ceiling. It was hard to believe this had once been an asylum. A fact the developers took advantage of by omitting it from their advertisements.
Seema slipped her headphones into her ears and grabbed her phone.
Morning. Last day!! Booking flight home tonight!!! 😎
She pressed send, picked a playlist off Spotify, and walked toward the elevators.
She thought about the three floors and seventy-four units she’d already checked – not including hallways and stairwells. The last fifteen units remaining. A bacon, egg and cheese sandwich on an everything bagel from her favorite corner shop. And her last exchange with Morag.
Seema’s thoughts snagged and got caught in a loop. She conjured up different scenarios where a different Seema wouldn’t need to say good-bye because her and Morag had already been hanging out for weeks now. She pretended that she’d invited to meet Morag at the restaurant on the corner after they were both done with their work. She imagined slipping her a piece of paper with her number on it.
Then, just before the elevator doors slid shut, a man walked past.
‘…the process of building memories in to the built space is an ongoing process…’***
Seema burst out of the elevators.
‘Hello?’ Her voice echoed in the emptiness. ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’
No one answered.
She’d already had an excruciatingly long elevator ride up and back down again to run through the different scenarios: It’d been a trick of the light. The result of a bad night’s sleep. An overactive imagination. A contractor who’d forgotten a tool. A stranger who’d wandered in to get out of the rain.
Seema had come up with every logical possibility, but it didn’t stop the chill that ran down her back or the goosebumps that took up residence along her arms.
‘Hello?’ she squeaked.
The ground floor had twenty-eight units. She could probably check them all in about fifteen minutes. If there was someone around, she could ask them to leave. If there wasn’t…
The elevator dinged impatiently behind her.
It probably was just a figment of her imagination.
No use wasting time.
The sooner she finished, the sooner she could leave.
Seema reboarded the elevator, but this time, as the doors shut, she stared down at the remaining punch list items left between her and the end of her day.
‘…places of memory or lieux de mémoire refer to those places where “memory crystallizes and secretes itself…’****
The first unit was always the worst. Her skin crawled as she inspected every wall, molding, flooring, ceiling, fixture, cabinet, window and door in every room and hallway. As she went along, she added a check mark next to the items that passed inspection or wrote a note beside those who would need some more work. Thankfully, she was able to use more green checks than notes and after about an hour, she was done.
Seema walked across the hall to unit D2 and started the process all over again. By this point, though, her nerves no longer screamed at the monotony of the task. Autopilot finally clicked on, and she methodically drifted through the flat in a hyper-aware daze.
Check.
Door frame to master bedroom chipped.
Check. Check.
Paint in hall needs a touch-up.
Check. Check. Check.
Light fixture in bathroom not working.
Seema finished her work in flat D2 and went straight into D3.
She repeated the process over and over and over again, until her stomach grumbled loud enough to be heard over the song playing in her ears. She checked the time, 12:45pm, and looked through her punch list. She’d completed seven flats. Almost halfway done. Either way it was time for lunch.
Seema traced her steps back to the central towers and slipped into flat D5. She walked up the stairs to the unit’s second floor and onto a sprawling open-plan living, dining, kitchen space with three, floor to ceiling windows that looked out over the trees to Glasgow beyond and the rain pelting the glass.
Seema sat before the portal. She pulled a ham sandwich from her bag, when movement in the glass’s reflection caught her eye. A figure in a white coat was walking down the stairs.
She spun around. ‘Hey!’
The figure was gone.
She threw her lunch in her bag and ran down the stairs.
‘Hello? Who’s there? This is a closed site. You shouldn’t be in here. Hello?’
Seema burst out of the flat and stopped in the hall. She turned around in a circle and continued to call out. She went back into the flat and searched every room. There was no one else there.
‘Architecture not only captures our memories but also has an impact on our reasoning and making sense of the world around us.’*****
Seema didn’t know whether or not she believed in ghosts, but it didn’t matter. Ghosts or not, she had a job to finish.
Forgoing lunch, she plowed through the rest of the flats. She focused on dents in plaster and light fixtures with missing covers and ignored hints of movement from out of the corner of her eyes. Seema put on the happiest, poppiest playlist she could find and worked in time with the beat. She sang and danced her way through seven more flats without another incident.
Then the music died.
‘Oh, come on. Not now.’ She tapped at her ear.
Nothing changed.
She pulled out one of her earbuds and a little green light blinked from atop its stem.
‘No…Nonono. Please no.’ Seema rummaged around in her bag until she found her phone but when she pulled it out, the bright, comforting light of her lock screen did not greet her. She pressed the power button anyways, but it was no use. Her phone was dead.
Seema took a deep breath. It was unfortunate but it would be ok. She only had one more flat to check. Fifteen to twenty more minutes and she’d walk out of this building forever. Pulling her shoulders back, she reached out to open the door but as soon as she touched the handle a loud CRACK echoed throughout the hall.
People filled the space.
There was a woman in a dress with a white apron over it. Another with an outfit Seema had only seen in old movies. Contractors with safety helmets. A group of teens sneaking by on tip toe.
Seema went cold.
She pressed herself against a wall as a man in a brown coat and fedora walked past…no, walked through her.
It was enough.
She ran for the fire exit.
Seema did her best to dodge and weave past the growing crowds of people but didn’t hesitate to barrel straight through the apparitions when they blocked her exit. She burst through the door, ran down the stairs and tore out into the main lobby. There were even more of those things crowding this space.
The building groaned.
More people from the past and present, young and old, male and female, popped into place. They walked, talked, laughed, and cried and yet they made no sound. They passed through each other, unaware.
Seema’s lungs couldn’t take in enough air. She gasped and took a step forward, straight into a pair of nurses.
They didn’t pay her any attention.
Seema waded through the sea of ghosts, one step at a time. She made it halfway across the space. The edge of the doorframe was in sight. She increased her pace. Seema made it all the way to the edge of the black, entry mat when suddenly she appeared in front of herself.
Ghost Seema hid within a floor-length black down coat. Her hair was shorter, and it kept slipping out from behind her ear. She bit her lip and crossed her arms in front of her chest.
Seema recognized that version of herself. It was her from her first day on the job.
Ghost Seema pulled out her phone and took a selfie before deleting it. She typed something out for Twitter but changed her mind about that too. She pushed that annoying piece of hair behind her ear and finally sent a text to her parents before putting her phone away.
Seema touched the bobby pin holding her hair in place.
Nothing had changed. She never changed. She’d been in a different country for three months and she was still texting her parents because she didn’t have anyone else to talk to.
Her past self looked up, and for a second, Seema swore she was looking right at her. Then she smiled, full of hope. Hope for the future and the adventure she was going to have. And she marched through Seema into the throng of past memories milling about the hall.
Seema walked out of the building. She didn’t look back at the crack that split the façade straight down the middle or the stream of memories that poured out of it. She didn’t make a note of it for the contractors or take a picture of it for her boss. Seema walked in the rain, away from the past, to the petrol station on the corner.
Epigraphs from:
* Remembering With Architecture marktoddy
** Why Do Old Places Matter? Memory Preservation Forum
*** House : A Collection of Memories Mindspace
**** The Place of Memory and Memory of Place Interdisciplinary Research Foundation
***** Spaces and Memories Rethinking the Future
Commentary
When I was first approached to take part in this project, I was instantly drawn towards Gartnavel’s ruined architecture. Having recently completed a DFA in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow on Dead Spaces (ruins that are forgotten and thus unseen), I toyed with the idea of contributing a creative non-fiction essay to the project. I’d visited the site in 2019 so I was familiar with the buildings but whereas in my previous work I was able to enter the ruined sites, Gartnavel Asylum was inaccessible. As a result, I decided to shift gears and contribute a speculative fiction piece inspired by the architecture and its history.
I read Simpson & Brown’s conservation audit from 2009 in which they proposed converting the Asylum’s old buildings into housing. Before coming to Scotland, I worked as an architect and before that I earned my Master’s in Adaptive Reuse of Architecture. I was familiar with the idea of adaptation as a means of preservation, but I was plagued by the idea of architecture retaining its memories, no matter how many different faces it takes on. During my Master’s course, I had a professor who claimed that architecture is created not just from the brick, mortar and steel but also through the memories that we imbue within it. As an asylum, the architecture was witness to a range of emotions both extreme and mundane and if it was to be converted into housing, it would continue absorbing the day-to-day of its new inhabitants’ lives. I wondered if there was a limit to the amount of memory architecture could contain.
I read different articles on memory in place, place memory, and memories in architecture and I played with different ideas in my head. After looking through the Wellcome Collection’s ‘Register of Physical Condition’ records of Gartnavel, I had an idea to make the asylum a ‘patient’ that is being assessed after being overburdened by the memories. I recreated the records the asylum used to admit patients and started to tell the architecture’s story but that line of creativity didn’t feel right, so I turned to the more traditional form of fiction.
For this work, a young architect is doing a final walk through of the now converted housing project. I focused on the protagonist’s internal struggles as she carries out her job, unaware of the building’s internal condition. Speculative fiction allowed me to explore the idea of over-burdening architecture and fiction gave me a character to ground my focus. I didn’t want to leave my research aside, and so I decided to hybridize my story by including quotes from my research. My aim was to hint at the final event but also leave the reader considering what memories they might be leaving in the architecture they occupy.
References:
Antrolia, Khyati. Spaces and Memories RTF | Rethinking the Future, 27 Sept. 2021, https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/fresh-perspectives/a5017-spaces-and-memories/
House : A Collection of Memories Mindspace, 15 May 2018, https://mindspacearchitects.wordpress.com/2016/08/22/house-a-collection-of-memories/
marktoddy. Remembering With Architecture 8late, 3 Oct. 2012, https://8late.wordpress.com/2012/09/09/remembering-with-architecture/
The Place of Memory and Memory of Place, Interdisciplinary Research Foundation, https://memory.lcir.co.uk
Why Do Old Places Matter? Memory Preservation Forum: Higher Logic, LLC, 4 Dec. 2013, https://forum.savingplaces.org/blogs/forum-online/2013/12/04/why-do-old-places-matter-memory
[Gartnavel Royal Hospital: Conservation Audit (of 1843 buildings) compiled by Simpson & Brown Architects for commissioning clients NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (July 2009)]
Originally from South Florida, Sally Gales graduated from the University of Glasgow with a Doctorate of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Before pursuing her doctorate, she worked as an architect, and she utilises her knowledge of built space to inform the worlds she creates in her speculative fiction. Her short stories have appeared in a variety of publications, such as New Writing Scotland 39, and she recently won third place in Faber Children’s ‘Imagined Futures’ Prize. Her debut young-adult, science fantasy novel is about a girl striving to find her place within a sentient, indoor city until she befriends the one species off-limits to humans. Sally lives in Glasgow with her fiancé and their large, sooky greyhound.