Exploring Concept of Collective Memory and its Retrieval in Urban Areas with Semiotic Approach (Case study: Hasan-Abad square)

Urban areas are significant elements in the structure of cities which can increase social interactions, identity and meaningfulness, formation of mental pictures and formation of the sense of collective memory. Urban areas show integrated structure of spatial organization of a city in which not only the connection of form and practice are to be considered, but also the meaning will find its place in whole complicated system of a city. Since forming the sense of collective memory has always been among the most basic qualitative principles and concepts in urban areas, finding a new approach to which can carefully explore the formative layers of urban areas is a priority. These layers are helpful in finding useful solutions for memorability of spaces and qualitative promotion of them.
Rollan Burt believes before any comment about the city, the technique of symbols should be utilized. With this new approach it seems it is possible to explore urban spaces and also to reach new solutions in the direction of the meaningfulness of a space and increasing the sense of collective memory. In this regard the objective of this research is to explore the concept of collective memory and its retrieval in urban areas with semiotic approach. Therefore the present research wants to discover the effective components on formation of the sense of collective memory on one hand and represent the conceptual template of semiotic on the other hand which is concealed in urban areas regarding the retrieval of memorability of urban spaces.Research is exploratory-explanatory and in the process of its decision making, an analytic comparison is used. Analysis of content and deductive reasoning is the main method to create the mental grounds of the research. Results express that the amount of memorability of Hasan-Abad square as an urban space based on the conceptual template presented in recent years and because of recent decisions of urban management has faded out. To retrieve the memorability, operational indexes of suggested semiotic templates in the frame of perceptual and social codes can revive the memorability of this square.