Ester Plato Bergendahl

My degree project examines how memories and history can be preserved through restoration and materialisation. I work with a house that has been in my family for generations – a place filled with traces of life, change and history. The house is now in a state of disrepair and has primarily an emotional value for those few who had a personal connection to it. By focusing on restoration and preservation, both of the building’s materiality and of the memories it holds, I create memory furniture – objects that carry stories through details, shapes and materials inspired by the house and the people who lived there. This furniture, created from fragments of the building, explores how history can be preserved and brought to life beyond the physical structure. Through the design, the objects become a bridge between the past, the present and the future, and the memory of the house is thereby given new a new life force, even if the building were to one day disappear.