The Temporal Extension of Place: The Phenomenon of Age in Heritage Environments

Our world is, by its very nature, a place of change; trees grow, skin wrinkles and stone discolours;
every state of being is finite and all opportunity is fleeting.

Intrinsic to the apparatus of perception are pre-reflective judgements concerning the transformative
processes constitutive of this world. We experience these intuitions as ‘age’ and, although derived
from momentary observations, this perceptual discernment allows us to ‘chronicle’ the flux and
stabilise the evanescent environment in which we find ourselves.

This primordial perceptual apparatus, evolved to allow us to understand transmutations in the

‘Natural’ environment, is applied equally to the artefacts of our technicity, and particularly the
sedimentations of our built heritage.

Through the phenomenon of age, we are able to ‘feel’ Time in physical objects. Furthermore, the
exercise of these sub-conscious perceptual skills generates within us the positive affect we feel in
temporally complex environments; in such contexts, age actually ‘nourishes’ us.

The paper proposes hypotheses concerning the mechanisms that underlie ‘age phenomena’,
developed through a doctoral project pairing traditional literature-based research and
phenomenology with sculpture practice, proposing routes by which perceptual structures adjust
meaning and generate emotional affect.

Clearly an informed understanding of our experience of objective age is crucial for anyone engaged
with the physical world but particularly designers and manipulators of place. Armed with a
structured view of how age ‘moves’ us, we can confidently progress not only toward being culturally
comfortable with the phenomenon, but employ its emoluments more fruitfully in the ‘worlds’ that
we construct for ourselves.