a story of connecting to my chinese heritage & childhood.

this project sparked when i was looking at old photos from my parents' childhood. the curiosity of how we all have different childhood memories than our parents, but still continue the same traditions was intersting.

for example, in our family, we celebrate many of the traditional chinese festivals: chinese new year, mid-autumn festival, lantern festival and many more. each festival and holiday holds a specific memory in my mind and a certain childhood memory. however, this childhood memory differs from my parents' memory, even though we celebrate the same thing. what would happen, if some how, we were able to merge our childhood memories with our loved ones, and experience these childhood memories together?

childhood memories are kept on our minds through long term memory. through small amounts of research, there is four types of long term memories: procedural, semantic, episodic, and priming.

within this project, these four memory types serve as the foundations of the four main memories that i recall as a child that hold strong roots of my culture. because these memories are always adjacent to my family, this intangible "structure" is built on the idea of the traditional chinese family courtyard housing: siheyuan. the siheyuan is a four sided courtyard that follows the elements of fengshui.

conceptually, the siheyuan would house the dreamland, where each side is a different type of childhood memory that is based off the four types of long term memory. a doorway to nostalgia!