THE UNBUILT MEMORY

AKSHITA AGARWAL, MOULSHREE VERMA

Virtual Reality Installation for the Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM),
Frankfurt am Main

This project unfolded through Vroxel — an evolving VR software created by Jan Philipp Drude, PhD candidate at University of Hannover. Set inside the architectural shell of Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM) by Oswald Mathias Ungers, the installation invites visitors to revisit early 20th-century European construction kits through the lens of contemporary digital imagination.

Based on the ARCHITECTO kit from the 1930s–40s — an educational system teaching children the logic of geometry, modularity, and structural balance — the installation works with only three interlocking pieces (1, 3 and 4) to construct a structural composition defined by elegant voids and mutual reinforcement. Modular constructs and skeletal frameworks give tangible form to intangible recollections.

The Unbuilt Memory draws upon the idea that memory is never a perfect mirror of reality but a selective reassembly shaped by imagination. It transforms fragments into presence, creating space between what once was and what is reimagined. This translation of memory into form becomes a dialogue with Ungers’ postmodern ideals — his layering of history with abstraction, his pursuit of rational clarity through geometric systems.

Rather than offering direct representations, the exhibition reinterprets memory as an evolving process — reconstructed, selective, and emotionally charged. The concept of Unbuilt emerges as a manifestation of memories that may have never physically existed, yet linger vividly in perception and emotion.