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This paper offers a conceptualisation of the tomason, developed in the 1980s by Genpei Akassegawa, Japonese hyperart artist: he means small urban objects, the function of which is no longer known. The aim of the paper is to show how this concept, which comes from the literature and the arts, can be adapted and become useful within urban studies. A whole range of authors (writers, poets, researchers, etc.) spoke on the city and they did some tomasons “without knowing it”, dealing with the issue of city dwellers memories and their relationship with urban spaces. The definition of the tomason first requires considering a corpus on memory, space and time, combining literature and social sciences. Two main authors are at the starting point: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Marcel Proust, for their contributions on the links between memory and space. Then a conceptual definition of the tomason is offered and enlarged to the issue of memory within urban spaces.