Undermined, Overwritten: Memories of the Capitol

While the digital information repository continues to be heralded as the answer to preservation and accessibility, this over-writing of the physical is precipitating a disconnection with our collective memories contained within the National Archives. Digitisation is a tool exploited by a government that desires to sequester its records from public access; a government that is no longer held to account. Intricate histories are converted into a series of hard drives stored in uninhabited server rooms; any messiness is deleted, along with the remnants of our past that won’t fit into the series of 1s and 0s.

This project presents a building that combines public physical archives, digital data repository, media centre, and cultural institution. Positioned opposite the parliament, it seeks to reclaim the prominence that the ‘Capitol’ signified in the Griffin’s plan for Canberra – a city crown – a place for the people to recall and recompose memory. Here, the digital is made subservient and recast simply as a preservation device. This project suggests that it is through architecture and the physical domain that the ineffable digital cloud can be grounded and made navigable, tangible and publicly legible once again - allowing us to touch our history without fearing its erasure.