The Eisenhower Memorial Commission on Wednesday will review two approaches, including one that removes most of these elements. If that plan is selected, Gehry informed the commission, he will ask for his name to removed.
— washingtonpost.com
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Removes 'most' of Genry's design - what kind of candyass bullshit is this?
Leaving Gehry out of this (for the moment), it is evident that the commission is clueless, incompetant and politically compromised. Putting Gehry back in, one can only wonder how he was selected for this commission.
Meanwhile, a congressional committee report released in July detailed cost overruns and questioned the process of selecting Gehry as the memorial’s architect.
This entire story makes me sick to my stomach. In part because when I read how deeply ignorant most of my fellow citizens are it fills me with despair.
That said, this one clever comment from the article made me laugh:
The consensus seems to be that the Gehry design is confused, overpriced, and totally out of place. Why not keep it on file for a few years and then use it for the George W. Bush Memorial?
Yeah, FRaC, I usually ignore you but I knew when I posted this that it would be misinterpreted, so I can't blame you for at least part of your vitriol. I should have elaborated:
I don't think people are necessarily ignorant for not liking Gehry's proposal in particular. I think people are ignorant for not thinking that the story of Ike is important: small town Kansas boyhood achieving greatness. Most commenters seem to only care about celebrating Eisenhower's MILITARY achievements, because rah rah America fuck yeah, I guess.
I think there's a much more nuanced story of American idealism, and an attempt to portray it in a subtle, artistic way through this - or perhaps another - memorial, that I think most Americans just don't give a damn about. And *that* is what disappoints me (along of course with the usual teabaggery of "Not with my taxes!!"). Are we as a nation really so unaware of things like introspection, metaphor, etc? I guess so.
Yes Donna, we really are a nation so unaware of things like introspection, metaphore, etc. Thank God we have you to enlighten us.
And yes, the nation must be filled with deeply ignorant people, if they don't appreciate the subtlty of Gehry's eight story pylonss and tapestries that look like a drive in theater/chain link fence. Do you know who else is an ingnorant shmoe? The guy President Obama selected to be on the commision, Bruce Cole former National Endowment for the Humanities.
“Originally, there were four eight-story columns from which metal screens were suspended. Now, the screens are gone and only two forlorn columns remain, which serve no purpose and look like giant industrial smokestacks,” Cole said. “What’s all this has got to do with Ike is beyond me.”
How much of an ideologue do you have to be to lable opponents of this design as republicans, reactionaries, or in your case... deeply ignorant? It never ceases to amaze me how entitled you feel to make such broad brush accusations, especially when presented with evidence to the contrary.
Again, Thayer, read my post: It's not about this design in particular. It's commentary condemning anything related to spending tax dollars on art, of any kind, that saddens me.
You want to attack me because you hate me. Broad-brush much?
And sorry, again to elaborate: One of my favorite parts of this proposal is the sculpture of Ike as a young boy. Yet commenters are screaming that "this isn't a monument to a BOY, it's a monument to a MAN and not just any man but a GENERAL!!"
Do these people not realize that boys in our society grow up to become men? And that we might be able to contemplate how the beginnings of young people may or may not have an influence on the people they become as adults, and, using our great leaders as examples to learn from, think about how we can foster greatness in more of our citizens?
Dave Hickey wrote about how the Columbine school shootings showed a failure of imagination: that these teenagers couldn't imagine the consequence of their actions on other people, or on themselves, and that they couldn't imagine an alternate world in which they didn't do this heinous thing and yet still managed to have agency in the world. The comments on the articles about the Eisenhower memorial - again, not just specific to Gehry's design but to memorials, history, Washington DC as a symbol of the nation,artistic representation and interpretation, and how people use shared urban space, all of those issues in general - show a terrifying lack of imagination or aspiration.
So yeah, an 80' tall by 11' diameter column is enormous, but people don't seem to have any imagination to think about what that object can be or represent outside of its size. They get hung up on size and their imagination just stops.
At this point I hope Gehry walks away and something boring, familiar, and palatable to most people gets built, whatever that might be: a park with parterres and sidewalks and a bronze statue of a bold-looking man standing in the middle, I guess.
We've learned all we can learn about ourselves from this project already. Time to give it up.
Donna, I've never met you, so how could I hate you? In fact, I've defended you when some a-hole bro throws you a sack of shit. I'm just amazed at how much you look down at those who don't see your point of view. "Deeply Ignorant" are your words, I'm just pointing out what they say about your point of view.
"So yeah, an 80' tall by 11' diameter column is enormous, but people don't seem to have any imagination to think about what that object can be or represent outside of its size. They get hung up on size and their imagination just stops."
Is it so incomprehensible that if one's work is read negatively, that it might have something to do with the medium rather than the audience? Some metaphors simply don't work. No need to whine, simply go back to the drawing board. Happens all the time.
...and again, Thayer, this argument - the one I'm making in THIS thread - isn't about people not agreeing with ME about THIS project, it's about people not being willing to use their imaginations to try for a deeper understanding of something and a general unwillingness by the populace to be accepting of something they don't understand at first. Your post above suggests that we should not have any Gothic cathedrals, San Francisco Victorian houses, or IMacs because they were weird and bizarre and maybe even degenerate when first presented.
Also, for comparison, the columns in the National Building Museum are apparently 75' high and 8' in diameter, and they're INDOORS, but no one is whining about them being too big...
I see Donnas point. It's kinda like people don't want to see the human side...the mortal...they want a shrine to the mighty "dear leader." I think FG actually had a nice concept of the content just don't like the clumsy design. But yeah, it seems that the people criticizing the content are not too different from the Koreans who don't want to see baby pics of the dear leader Kim Jung un is his underoos. As far as the design goes...I personally think it sucks.
I'll whine... I think that the columns in the NBM are too big. But at least they have entasis, and they actually support something other than a driving range fence...
and lack of imagination leads to ... Columbine shootings
TERRIFYING!
hey speaking of columbine you should ask that not 'c' number 2 about it. he 'nods in agreement' when his 'nuke the hamptons' devotees suggest that dylan and eric were on to something ...
the column as a monument isn't supposed to bear anything other than a narrative. gehry's project is as traditional as it gets. unwrap trajans column. I have no problem with despairing over people's ignorance about architecture, except that im not going to waste my time despairing over peoples ignorance and idiocy. Isn't that what we're here for, to know a lotta shit about architecture and defend it against the Issas and thayers of the world?
"Your post above suggests that we should not have any Gothic cathedrals, San Francisco Victorian houses, or IMacs because they were weird and bizarre and maybe even degenerate when first presented."
You might like it to suggest that, but infact it dosen't, just like you might like to think I hate you simply becasue I disagree with you. Both gothic cathedrals and most SF victorians where designed by carpenters and masons to communicate to people the way architecture always has, through form and decoration. Do you really think that every new style was viewed as wierd and bizzare? It seems you are stuck on the modernist nostalgia that being obtuse, and therefore above the hoi poloi is the qualification for excellence in architecture. I guess that's were the shockitecture meme comes from, the need to be a badboy rebel, even when the academies are long gone. Actually, the academies are back, they just traded the classicist mask for a modernist/conceptual mask. Being wierd and bizzare means you are cool, except when everyone is trying to be the wierdest, then it's all the same bullshit. If you're loved, there's something suspect, becasue being loved is scary and potentially harmful, yet we all crave it. Infact, we can't live a healthy life without it, so no I don't hate you, Gehry, or Modernism. What I hate is this additude that if somehting isn't over intellectuallized, it's somehow defficient. It's just not true, and somehow contributes to our mostly banal and ugly landscape. When we negate a basic need to communicate to be understood and instead communicate rather to stand apart, simply becasue there are aspects of others we don't agree with or find repelant. It just smacks of defeatism to me. Especially now when there are many possible calamities on the horizon, like climate warming. We should be finding things in common, rather than smuggly laughing at those who "don't get it".
Do the columns at the National Building Museum have a narrative that would make them more interesting? Is there a hidden metaphore that people don't get? Might their juxtaposition with the smaller columns have something to do with their interest? Wether they have a narrative or not is irrelevant though, just as most metaphores in buildings becasue that's not how people read architecture for the most part. What are the metaphores in the Tri-Beca warehouses that I'm missing, becasue a sunset walk in that hood is the closest I'll ever get to heaven. It's like a person who says, well, 'I meant to say 'bla bla bla' but your too stupid to understand so you took it the wrong way. At some point, don't you empathize with that person and simply learn to communicate better? Some people just don't care, infact setting themselves apart from others is a way to make them feel better about themselves. This constant calling out those that don't see it your way as being ignorant is no different than a stupid upper class person, a righteous christian, or some Ivy league prat. It's all just smoke and mirrors if you ask me.
"Isn't that what we're here for, to know a lotta shit about architecture and defend it against the Issas and thayers of the world?" Nailed it. You need to get your head out of the well boy, it's not as scary as you think. All though, I didn't grow up in your shoes, so you very well might have something to fear. Have you being watching the FDR series on PBS? Great stuff. We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Maybe that's what Olaf meant by non bullshit bullshit.
What I hate is this additude that if somehting isn't over intellectuallized, it's somehow defficient. It's just not true, and somehow contributes to our mostly banal and ugly landscape.
Yes, because every Fypon-and-EIFS-and-asphalt strip mall is so over-intellectualized. *That* is what makes them ugly, the bucketloads of theory the designers bring to them.
I LOL'd, EKE. Though I also think it raises a legitimate question: does entasis, or an intentional rejection of it, matter any more in our very flat world?
Donna, Maybe I should have explained myself better. There will always be a certain percentage of builder grade strip mall work and there has always been. But the builder grade stuff before modernism is much more loved than the recent crop. You should see the stuff they preserve in DC and how well it polishes up. Some run of the mill 1920's car dealership with off the shelf decorations is now one of the hottest restaurants on 14th street, LeDiplomate.
What does this have to do with the price of coffee, you might ask? Look at the difference between 'academic' work today and 'builder' work, vs. academic work before modernism and its corresponding builder work. You may not have noticed, but the two in the former tend to be from two different worlds while the two in the latter look related, kind of like the city slicker and his country cousin, different in sophistication maybe but deffinatly related. To see this quickly one need look no further than professional magazines of today vs. back then. I wondered why that might be. Architects salivate over old Sears bungalow neighborhoods today, yet sniker over McMansions.
Becasue the over-intellectualized work of the academy today lives in a cloistered world and is almost incomprehensible to even the cognoscente, in large part by design. I had a professor that used to say, 'I love that which I can't understand', becasue it implied a certain depth and intellectual rigor. That's not to say it has no merrit, but like Eisenman's Decon, somethings are better left to French intellectuals. Anyway, the point is, I used to see tons of students glaze over at this kind of drivel yet they had to play along to get by and even master the art of BS if they went all in. Yet most looked at it as a right of passage and thus became cynical about the profession, discarding any of their ofiginal enthusiasm for the profession, the kind you hear from clients who say 'I always wanted to be an architect'. Consequently, many of them leave school thinking that traditional work is pastiche, yet to secure work from the local developer who "knew" that homey shit sold either had to convince them otherwise or settle for sprinkling some phypon crap over a shed. Never mind that their spouses would say, I ain't living in a glass box...that might work for your thesis project, but I want a cape cod. Just look at Eisenman or just about any of my old Pratt professors. Not practicing what you preach used to be a sign of BS.
Now some people on blogs like this entertain themselves laughing at the schlock out there without trying to understand how to change things and content themselves by calling people ignorant. I too cringe at that stuff, but it's too easy to simply laugh and live in my own bubble as if there where some inpenertable gulf between me and them. I understand why people chose this path, but I don't think it's as inevitable as you seem to believe. All those photos of fypon you like to post are indeed funny/sad, but every town and subdivision has hundreds of examples. It's too easy. And yes, some overloaded original vicrorian pile used to make academic architects laugh and even today, but why is it that those buildings are still more loved than the average modernist ranch burger, or why do they still build McMansion pastiche boxes of disposable crap?
I don't think I have all the answeres and I certainly don't think villanizing modernism (as a style) is the answer. But I am interested in looking at history and contemporary science to better understand this phenomenom, and I do think ideological thinking is an impediment, the kind that academics seem to revel in. I hope this makes my point clearer, but if we disagree in the future, it's not becasue I hate you. I just think you're being a tad lazy, at least intellectually. Speaking of lazy, what's flat about our world?
Thayer, this above post is the kind of post I was accustomed to from you when I said somewhere a couple weeks ago that I enjoy arguing with Thayer-D because at least he brings some nuance to the discussion. Then, I kid you not, 5 minutes after I posted that you attacked me for being an elitist.
Thayer, here, on this thread, I explained why I find most commentary on architecture ignorant and you attack me for being an elitist. Yes, sometimes I'm lazy about fully explaining myself when posting here, because jeepers we have these same arguments over and over and because we can use shorthand when speaking with other architects, but I'm not intellectually lazy.
I do believe in expertise. I'm far more educated and sophisticated in my views on architecture than most non-architects; I'd say I rank somewhere in the middle or lower than most of my fellow architects. One of the reasons I'd rank myself fairly low is that I'm not an idealogue at all - in fact I'm generally too able to find some level of agreement with so many sides of an argument. But when it comes to simpleminded things like attacking Gehry *because* he's been labeled a starchitect, or rejecting the idea that a stylistic diversity might be welcome in maintaining a vibrant historic street, or refusing to believe years of research showing that surface parking lots are detrimental to urban streetscapes (the issue currently facing the city where I live), I'm just not going to bother holding back. I *do* know better: 8 years of school, a professional registration, and 25 years of practice mean I do know more than Joe the Plumber about the design of the environment.
The world is flat because one of the things we're still trying to learn in the internet era is how to accommodate expertise when everyone has an equal platform for shouting their opinion. People stop vaccinating their children because of the incorrect views of an actress (FFS), in but one example. It's not elitist to look for credentials when hearing an opinion.
That said, nothing about Gehry's work is academic, intellectualized elitism, and as far as I recall he's the first one to say so. He's an artist who happens to be an architect, too.
Thayer, i think you're dumb, ok? i think youre the epitome of faux 'fair and balanced' thinking. i think you do shitty lip service to being open and interested. i think you have bad taste. i think you have an ugly chip on your shoulder. i think your calamities on the horizon are a cheap appeal like "think about the children!"
so, yeah, i said some shit about columns and narratives, and then you wrote some shit on the internet in response. Or not so much in response, but trying to use the words in a different way, because you did not make an argument nor address it to anyone.
So let me say it again. Trajan's column. Lets be concrete. Its, say, 100' feet tall. 11 feet in diameter. And it has a narrative relief which extends the full height of the column.
Can you not make the conceptual jump to how gehry's project participates in the history of architecture? Can you not unwind trajan's column and dare to imagine what that might look like? can you not acknowledge that this type of thinking is unavailable to a number of people SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY HAVE SPENT ZERO TIME WITH THE HISTORY OF ARCHITETURE AND DONT KNOW ITS PRECENDENTS?
No one is talking about imaginary da vinci code metaphors in the national building museum. thats your bullshit dodge which segues into another dodge. im talking about architecture: columns and friezes and pediments. when a column becomes a monument.
Donna, I also believe in expertise, just not for the sake of looking down my nose. And I'm not the only one who reads your "deeply ignorant" comment and others as exactly what it is, unless you want to deconstruct even the most unambiguous words in the english language. But you're not alone, we all do it to a degree. Can't help it sometimes. I think lot's of people are deeply ignorant like boy in a well who can't go through a post without telling me to fuck off or some such penetrating comment. I'm with you on knowing more than Joe the Plumber, but truth be told, there are many Joe the Plumbers in architecture if you can look beyond the facade and recognise a blow hard for what he or she is. I also agree that the starchitect lable is stupid...how many people here would give their right leg to trade places with one of the annointed ones? Not me I can assure you (young kids and all) but I actually like a lot of Gehry's work, just not this design. People have a right to like or dislike things without being labled as part of what I agree is the most ignorant part of the Republican party. (Refering to butt-crack Joe).
ANd thank you (sincerely) for explaining the flat world thing too. I can be just as lazy intellectually, especially when the theory book reads like a code book. I consider myself an intellectual and a deplore the anti-intellectual streak in this country, but I will say I prefer them having to 'walk the plank' in America rather than the European fashion of swooning over the first run-on sentence. If you can get through to the masses a little, it just means that there's probably not as much bullshit involved. (Mark Twain et al) Credentials do matter, but one of the things I like aobut the internet is there can be an open market for ideas and may the best or most interesting ones rise to the surface. I really think there's a democratic aspect to this in the face of the gargantuan enterprises buying everything up from agriculture to art. But let's not dodge behind the "show me your papers" mentality when talking about how it feels to be around art. I might not get all the metaphors (or care) that Gehry or Michelangelo throw my way, but I have every right to say it feels like crap. I know I'm treading into Fox News territory where they pass hatred off for how they feel in the gut, but I'm talking about art, not school policies or climate change.
Also, I think your totally right about Gehry disavowing the over-intellectualization of architecture. He is an artist. Infact, that's one of the reasons I liked him. It's refreshing sometimes to see a sculptural buildings for just that, sculpture, rather than have to listen to Rem tell me all about whatever the fuck he goes on about. But in this design, the concept (which I like in concept) seems to be its only redeeming feature. Like the Vietman Memorial, great concept, and the fact that it comes through so poigniantly in reality says a lot for the designer's talent and minimalism in general wether it be the traditional or modernist or combo variety. But to dislike this fenced compound for giants dosen't mean you are an idiot or harbor fascist tendancies. Nor does one have to throw a bunch of classical columns on the site, although I don't think there's anything wrong with that, conceptually at least. It's just that this design feels wrong, especially given Eisenhower's reaction to the concentration camps and the fact that it's in a city square, all be it an ugly one (becasue of it's bald modernist surroundings, let's face it).
Anyways, I appreciate that we can have this back and forth, and I will refrain from calling you an elitist, if you'll refrain from calling people who don't always get it as ignorant, becasue I "feel" like you're not, for what it's worth. I just wish as a profession we would try and understand what seems like a very human instinct to decorate our surroundings and not outlaw the use of some decorations (traditional) in favor of others (modernist). Let's teach both well, and not act like one is superior to the other. They are the same instinct, just maybe not one's cup of tea. I will say, when architects give me almost nothing to contemplate (I'm looking at you Holland!), it's a bit depressing. I kid with the Dutch though, I love them and their country. Especially Amsterdam!
To ma' boy in a well,
"Can you not unwind trajan's column and dare to imagine what that might look like? can you not acknowledge that this type of thinking is unavailable to a number of people SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY HAVE SPENT ZERO TIME WITH THE HISTORY OF ARCHITETURE AND DONT KNOW ITS PRECENDENTS?"
I'll answer in order. Yes, I can 'unwind' a stupid fucking triumphalist column, but can you understand that to most people, a bald giant column is a bald giant column? And one dosen't or shouldn't have to have taken some History of Architecture class to be able to get it, it should speak on multiple levels, and even if it didn't, can you get it through your thick scull that it still might be unattractive, and that looks actually matter? How many times do posters here change their look (on that little photo) to communicate something about themselves? Do you need to go to fashion school to 'read' those things? By the way, stop telling people to fuck off if you want to be taken seriously. Telling someone to take their head out of their ass is a bit strange coming from someone who's "in a well".
Donna : I think people are ignorant for not thinking that the story of Ike is important: small town Kansas boyhood achieving greatness. Most commenters seem to only care about celebrating Eisenhower's MILITARY achievements, because rah rah America fuck yeah, I guess.
Then again, Hitler's story was that of a small town Braunau am Inn boyhood achieving a fantastic infamy....if we're talking about before and after, relatively humble and thereafter iconic.
Why should a small town Kansas boyhood matter? What's with the Hollywoodisation?
I suggest that both views are ignorant: that of a noncritical celebration of military achievements as well as that of a benign irrelevant puerile celebration of small town boy made good. Not surprisingly, these two find parallels in the Hollywood imagination: celebration of violence and fantastic corniness devoid of complexity, moral ambiguity and so on. Brains being blown out and little children discovering shy fawns approaching them in their backyard.
Can a critical spirit be incorporated within a memorial or is a memorial necessarily uncritical of its subject of patronage? I mean, lets also recall Ike's other accomplishments (already posted here), which would give a different meaning on what this nice young boy grew up to be...or this brave pristine Olympus of a war hero could also be up to:
Certain individuals are planning to build a memorial in Washington to Dwight D. Eisenhower—a multimillion dollar project to be laid on the backs of American taxpayers. The project has gotten as far as it has because no one has had the guts to point out that Eisenhower is literally the last person in the world who should be honored by the American people because his record clearly shows him to be a mass murderer. In addition to his dismal record as a military commander whose appointment by Franklin Roosevelt was purely political and had nothing whatsoever to do with merit, the full facts about this person must be seen, acknowledged and weighed. The most outstanding fact about Eisenhower is his cold-blooded murder of some 2 million German soldiers who had honorably surrendered in 1945. Instead of treating these soldiers as prisoners of war, as he was bound to do under the Geneva Convention, Eisenhower invented a new category, designating them as “disarmed enemy personnel,” thus adopting the doubletalk of a pettifogging shyster lawyer and in his twisted mind justifying his crime. And then Eisenhower murdered these soldiers, penning them up behind barbed wire and letting them starve to death, subject to the heavy rainfall and the cold winter weather of 1945. He ordered anyone who tried to free them or even feed them to be shot by the armed American guards he stationed around the enclosure. Doubters must study this. It is truly a horror story. Thanks are owed to the Canadian, James Bacque, for exposing this in his book, Other Losses: An Investigation Into the Mass Deaths of German Prisoners, and to Herbert L. Brown in The Devil’s Handiwork: A Victim’s View of “Allied” War Crimes
In 1945, General Dwight Eisenhower ordered that "Operation Keelhaul" be put into effect. This involved rounding up and shipping back to "their countries of origin" ALL the refugees from communism: men, women and children, soldier or civilian, male or female, even though many of them had been fighting on OUR side during the war. Since all of Eastern Europe was then under Communist domination, sending these people back was, quite literally, a sentence of death, some by immediate execution and the rest by slow extermination from overwork and malnutrition in the Soviet slave labor camps in Siberia. These people were rounded up at bayonet point, forced into freight cars and shipped off to a terrible fate. There was no accurate count kept but the MINIMUM figure was 2,000,000 people and a maximum has been set at 5,000,000. The true numbers may never be known, NEVER! The elimination of all these anti-Communist people made the Communist domination of Eastern Europe MUCH easier. And the American people were kept blissfully unaware of this action which Eisenhower enforced rigidly, even though it violated international law, the laws of his own country and laws of humanity.
I'm not really buying the "unwinding of Trajan's Column" reading. I've followed the news about the memorial quite closely, and I've never heard anything about that. Maybe some critic developed that reading of it, but if haven't seen it. And I have never heard that that was a reading that Gehry had in mind while designing the memorial.
If that was an intended reading of the memorial, well, in my opinion it falls short. There is nothing in detailing of the columns or screens that would reinforce that reading of it. Nothing that would really lead me to see a reference to Trajan's Column, over, say, a drive-in movie screen, a driving range fence, or a roll of paper towels (now with a decorative tree pattern!).
The key to Trajan's Column is that its decorative embellishment is spiraling and it's a narrative. It tells a story. Gehry's design is nothing like that. It's a screen stretched between two big, featureless poles. Let's stop calling them "columns".
Actually, Operation KEELHAUL was the last of several repatriations to the USSR under an agreement with Stalin in exchange for US POWs in German camps in Soviet territory, and the total number was around 1,000. Many of the repatriated were Russians who had fought for the Nazis such as the XV SS Cossack Cavalry Corps. As a matter of record the UK and the US also jailed or executed a number of citizens for treason during the war.
War crimes abounded on all sides, and in fact the Allies had to carefully select exactly which German crimes were prosecuted at Nuremberg because they were in fact guilty of many of the same ones on a much larger scale.
Aside from that there were > 30m refugees in Europe after the war. The continent's infrastructure from transportation to government structure to food and industrial production was decimated. Repatriation was the only way to deal with such vast numbers of displaced people in such impossible circumstances. It is estimated that >2/3 of the 90m casualties of WW2 were from starvation.
tammuz, we all know how evil the US is, so you can go back to your Palestine thread now.
Miles I think we make columns of TV sets playing Ike's farewell address over and over in every language and call it a day. ...but no one wants to remember that speech, its too critical of the industrial military complex.:::::::::::::::::;;; going to agree with miles twice in one thread, yes Tammuz t a m m u z go take your empty intellectual dumps in your designated thread. Does tamu write his stuff first in french and use babblefish to translate? Illuminati pot dub step holy cows apes religion
Instead of treating these soldiers as prisoners of war, as he was bound to do under the Geneva Convention, Eisenhower invented a new category, designating them as “disarmed enemy personnel,” thus adopting the doubletalk of a pettifogging shyster lawyer and in his twisted mind justifying his crime. And then Eisenhower murdered these soldiers, penning them up behind barbed wire and letting them starve to death, subject to the heavy rainfall and the cold winter weather of 1945. He ordered anyone who tried to free them or even feed them to be shot by the armed American guards he stationed around the enclosure
Yes, clearly I'm not a white north American who builds a library of anglo-saxonic wars spelling out the glories of her or his civilization; rather, I'm inclined to see the disasters left in their wake. However, this is also specific topic.
To build a memorial to him is to commemorate him for greatness...but what and how is this greatness understood? This should be a concern. Wouldn't that be fair to ask? Yes, Eisnehower is known for raising an alarm over the industrial military complex -albeit having , necessarily, benefitted from it,..but how about a legacy that is kept under the shadows in preference for a reading that this memorial embodies: military achievements - and he has been criticized that he is not a great strategist anyway - and the puerile benign intrigue over boy-made-good story to win the hearts of the good people. How about war crimes, as mentioned above, that should merit attention.
I suggest that, unlike memorials to Martin Luther King, Malcom X, figures from the American Indian Movement, and I am sure a hoard of white activists who supported rights across the board, Eisenhower was a relic of an empire that still exists. It is not the personal merit that the establishment finds within the likes of this guy but rather the merit endowed in him as a part of the history of power within this Empire.
That is why I'm wondering what would an "anti-establishment" (a classification that culturally is not universal) memorial to Eisenhower look like.
As for establishment, I think that polarity setup by Gehry is actually quite faithful; if I may say, within pyshco- gendered terms merely used for convenience not so much out of conviction (not limited to sex of course; I know women with more "man" than me) , it pleases the "man" in one (war hero) as well as the "woman" in one (boy from small town with a great future ahead). Which brings back Hollywood deliberately polarly situated clichés: shooting someone's brains out and a child hugging his little pony. Hollywood knows how to sell to its primary audience.
And from that point of view, Gehry also succeeds in tapping into the US imagination actually.
Eisenhower is a relic who realized what he was involved in after it was over, this can happen to the most conscientious person or say an honest boy from Kansas. War is a crime. The notion that there are war crimes is a strange one, one that suggests parts of war are ok or civil. So discussing war crimes or hoping a anti-memorial could express these war crimes is silly. To go to war to end the war is what is typically memorialized. The list tammuz proposes suggests people that were agents in a moment of change for the improvement/advancement of civilization. By this definition then Eisenhower is no different then this list and more importantly he realized the error in the direction caused by this change in civilization, which makes him different then tammuz list. So the memorial itself is paradoxical. The Japanese tourists often smile for photos at pearl harbor and the Americans are more somber. It could be that kind of memorial. I think Gehry may be presenting this in his scheme effectively which means its a split design one that emotes confounding feelings and assumptions and for this matter the whole exercise is illuminating to what and why a memorial? Is it for the man, the actions in the rise of the military industrial complex, or is it a memorial to what he realized about the potential problems of such a complex? I would be interested in Demilit and Orhan's opinion on what this memorial, if one should exist, should be?
I drank enough to kill a hipster fish in willy burg brooklyn tonight. .as that is where I was. the last bus to the old bridge of nj. I have one thing to say - Amen brother Orhan Amen. My county was never meant to be a military pawn. We are free men who believe in free being.
I still don't understand why Eisenhower is getting a memorial.
Moreover, why are his damn granddaughters considered important "Stakeholders"? They're not paying for it. It's not their land. Big damn deal that he bounced them on his knee. The memorial is the project by a nation to memorialize one of its leaders. The granddaughters should get 2 votes out of 300+ million. Just like everyone else.
Orhan's last post is interesting. That quote and its reminder of Eisenhower's warning of the Military Industrial complex, when measured against the current status of military overspending in the US, reveal that the country that is building a Memorial to a "Great Man" has completely abandoned the things he actually believed in most deeply.
Hi eke! How are you? How does the source of a reading contribute to its validity? Is the source more important than the idea? Do Gehry's artistic intentions entirely circumscribe how his proposal exists in history (especially when building in a national capital)? Personally, i dont think so.
the reading is mine.
its how i locate the potential of his proposal, via a dialogue with history.
i dont think its the most immediately attractive proposal, but i think it has a lot of potential and is worth thinking about, and not just casually thinking about, but architecturally thinking about, using architectural ideas like the column and the pediment. whats a pediment? its where the sculpture and the story go! Well, now we have our variation on it: a filigreed block of space. One which could be excellent to be in.
of course there is no specific reference to trajans column in the project. its a reading by an architect who embraces a long view of history like i said, the reading is mine. if yours is limited to drive in movie screens, well so be it. I bet frank would dig that. Would it be better if the scrims twirled and spiraled like every other gehry building that people loved or hated? he's making a decision for content over form. And i personally think the content is worthwhile. If changing the names of the columns helps your position, then maybe your position isnt very strong.
Hi thayer! why dont you fuck off! I could give a fuck about how you take it; up the ass or seriously or with two sugars. I'd take you seriously if you ever had something to say that was architecturally relevant or even slightly architecturally interesting. which you usually dont. and by all means, base your arguments on my screen name! I've had a few and they've caused some fights! and i've had a few while i was writing this! when i say 'filigreed block of space' im saying that looks matter, but we all know that looks dont matter for eyes that cannot see, as Le FERGUSON Corbusier once said.
Ultimatly, I'm not sure why we need a memorial to Eisenhower myself. I think he was a great leader and a great man (human), but I also think Jane Jacobs and Rachel Carson where also. I guess the idea of the size and prominance of this memorial speaks to how important the fight against Nazi Germany was. I just don't know if picking out one General on such a scale makes sense. The Civil War memorials that where sprinkled around traffic circles show the typical 'dude on a horse' sculpture at the center of these spaces, but they don't overwhelm the spaces. I think that makes more sense rather than this overblown stalinist thing of Gehry's. It dosen't have to be a realist sculpture, maybe a hunk of Serraesque metal that expresses the anguish of those times (yada), but this design is a thesis concept on steroids. Great for generating ideas, bad in reality.
"he's making a decision for content over form." - boy in a well
And that's why, on the whole, modernism has failed to connect with the public, it fails to connect becasue for better or for worse, architecture is a visual medium. 'Content' all you want, but if you neglect form, how is it supposed to communicate? Knowing history certainly makes one's reading of the built environment richer, problem is if you are only speaking to those in the know, it is bound to fail more broadly, and if that's none of your concern, you are by definition, elitist. Maybe there should be speakers announcing the "content" on loop, or a ticker tape a la Jenny Holzer between the poles spewing out all the text your imperialist brain is too stupid to get. There's your unwindingTrajan's Column. Too literal? Content, I'm afraid, is in the mind of the beholder. Form, is in the mind of anyone present. Neglect the latter and you've failed.
There was no need to mention that which you say because that wasn't the point. The content is not shared while the form is, so while beholder and anyone present are the same, the difference is in how each might interpret content, especially regarding abstraction. Physical form is a 3-d reality I think we can all agree on, unless one is tripping.
As to how the public relates with modernism, I won't challenge you as that is definatly up to one's interpretation. But like has been shown over and over here, there's ample evidence about how the public connects with modernism. Like a fundamentalist though, you might not be comfortable with the evidence.
Greek colums (wether revival or not) will infact mean different things to different people, but all people will see that they are stout and lined with a simple cornice and no feet. Agreeing with what they look like is different than what they symbolize. Not sure hwo this is so difficult to get. I'll try again.
"he's making a decision for content over form." Maybe this isn't true in this case, I don't know, but for those who neglect or dimminish the sensory impact infavor of the conceptual content, expect your design will suffer. I'm not trying to diminish content, but I think form is equal or more important becasue that is what most people will read, whether positively or not. In the case of the Eisenhower memorial, there have been so many negative readings of its content that at some point you have to acknowlege this is a failed design. If you read unwrapped classical columns or the small town Kansas boyhood in this design, good for you. But to assume you are ignorant if you don't share that or another reading is jsut dumb and not very democratic IMHO.
I so wish Gehry would cut bait, the committee that is pushing all this nonsense would get their way, and they'd build something embarrassing like Duany's proposal:
Just because it would be entertaining.
I've been a champion of Gehry's proposal all along.
1) They hired him, and the committee liked his proposal before they didn't.
2) Unlike other monument sites, this was a tricky urban-scale negotiation of a large busy intersection surrounded by undistinguished office buildings. The design problem was try to make such a place special. The scheme: taking ownership of the space, controlling its vistas via the screens and paths, using large scaled interventions at the centerpiece in order to focus attention on the main event.
All necessary and admirable in my book. Maybe, as long as we keep electing people like those on this Congressional panel, the same folks who don't have the principles or the guts to stand up to the 'military/industrial' complex Eisenhower warned about, we don't deserve better than the vacuous, mute, intentionally bland Duany solution.
91 Comments
Removes 'most' of Genry's design - what kind of candyass bullshit is this?
Leaving Gehry out of this (for the moment), it is evident that the commission is clueless, incompetant and politically compromised. Putting Gehry back in, one can only wonder how he was selected for this commission.
Meanwhile, a congressional committee report released in July detailed cost overruns and questioned the process of selecting Gehry as the memorial’s architect.
The cranks are winning.
This entire story makes me sick to my stomach. In part because when I read how deeply ignorant most of my fellow citizens are it fills me with despair.
That said, this one clever comment from the article made me laugh:
The consensus seems to be that the Gehry design is confused, overpriced, and totally out of place. Why not keep it on file for a few years and then use it for the George W. Bush Memorial?
Or maybe someone doesn't want an Eisenhower memorial.....
because when I read how deeply ignorant most of my fellow citizens are it fills me with despair.
oh shut the fuck up
a few republicans oppose the project and you've lost your ability to see what a shit design this is. and I like gehry, for the most part.
^ One can always depend on FRaC to put the proof in the pudding.
how deeply ignorant most of my fellow citizens are
Yeah, FRaC, I usually ignore you but I knew when I posted this that it would be misinterpreted, so I can't blame you for at least part of your vitriol. I should have elaborated:
I don't think people are necessarily ignorant for not liking Gehry's proposal in particular. I think people are ignorant for not thinking that the story of Ike is important: small town Kansas boyhood achieving greatness. Most commenters seem to only care about celebrating Eisenhower's MILITARY achievements, because rah rah America fuck yeah, I guess.
I think there's a much more nuanced story of American idealism, and an attempt to portray it in a subtle, artistic way through this - or perhaps another - memorial, that I think most Americans just don't give a damn about. And *that* is what disappoints me (along of course with the usual teabaggery of "Not with my taxes!!"). Are we as a nation really so unaware of things like introspection, metaphor, etc? I guess so.
Yes Donna, we really are a nation so unaware of things like introspection, metaphore, etc. Thank God we have you to enlighten us.
And yes, the nation must be filled with deeply ignorant people, if they don't appreciate the subtlty of Gehry's eight story pylonss and tapestries that look like a drive in theater/chain link fence. Do you know who else is an ingnorant shmoe? The guy President Obama selected to be on the commision, Bruce Cole former National Endowment for the Humanities.
“Originally, there were four eight-story columns from which metal screens were suspended. Now, the screens are gone and only two forlorn columns remain, which serve no purpose and look like giant industrial smokestacks,” Cole said. “What’s all this has got to do with Ike is beyond me.”
How much of an ideologue do you have to be to lable opponents of this design as republicans, reactionaries, or in your case... deeply ignorant? It never ceases to amaze me how entitled you feel to make such broad brush accusations, especially when presented with evidence to the contrary.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/eisenhower-memorial-commission-to-review-new-designs/2014/09/15/a15af34e-3d1c-11e4-b0ea-8141703bbf6f_story.html
Again, Thayer, read my post: It's not about this design in particular. It's commentary condemning anything related to spending tax dollars on art, of any kind, that saddens me.
You want to attack me because you hate me. Broad-brush much?
And sorry, again to elaborate: One of my favorite parts of this proposal is the sculpture of Ike as a young boy. Yet commenters are screaming that "this isn't a monument to a BOY, it's a monument to a MAN and not just any man but a GENERAL!!"
Do these people not realize that boys in our society grow up to become men? And that we might be able to contemplate how the beginnings of young people may or may not have an influence on the people they become as adults, and, using our great leaders as examples to learn from, think about how we can foster greatness in more of our citizens?
Dave Hickey wrote about how the Columbine school shootings showed a failure of imagination: that these teenagers couldn't imagine the consequence of their actions on other people, or on themselves, and that they couldn't imagine an alternate world in which they didn't do this heinous thing and yet still managed to have agency in the world. The comments on the articles about the Eisenhower memorial - again, not just specific to Gehry's design but to memorials, history, Washington DC as a symbol of the nation,artistic representation and interpretation, and how people use shared urban space, all of those issues in general - show a terrifying lack of imagination or aspiration.
So yeah, an 80' tall by 11' diameter column is enormous, but people don't seem to have any imagination to think about what that object can be or represent outside of its size. They get hung up on size and their imagination just stops.
At this point I hope Gehry walks away and something boring, familiar, and palatable to most people gets built, whatever that might be: a park with parterres and sidewalks and a bronze statue of a bold-looking man standing in the middle, I guess.
We've learned all we can learn about ourselves from this project already. Time to give it up.
If Ike should be remembered for anything it's his farewell address.
Donna, I've never met you, so how could I hate you? In fact, I've defended you when some a-hole bro throws you a sack of shit. I'm just amazed at how much you look down at those who don't see your point of view. "Deeply Ignorant" are your words, I'm just pointing out what they say about your point of view.
"So yeah, an 80' tall by 11' diameter column is enormous, but people don't seem to have any imagination to think about what that object can be or represent outside of its size. They get hung up on size and their imagination just stops."
Is it so incomprehensible that if one's work is read negatively, that it might have something to do with the medium rather than the audience? Some metaphors simply don't work. No need to whine, simply go back to the drawing board. Happens all the time.
...and again, Thayer, this argument - the one I'm making in THIS thread - isn't about people not agreeing with ME about THIS project, it's about people not being willing to use their imaginations to try for a deeper understanding of something and a general unwillingness by the populace to be accepting of something they don't understand at first. Your post above suggests that we should not have any Gothic cathedrals, San Francisco Victorian houses, or IMacs because they were weird and bizarre and maybe even degenerate when first presented.
Also, for comparison, the columns in the National Building Museum are apparently 75' high and 8' in diameter, and they're INDOORS, but no one is whining about them being too big...
cough, cough....
GODDAMIT THOSE ARE TOO BIG!!.
AND IM A REGUALR JOE SO MY OPINION MATTERS EVEN MORE THAN YOURS, GODDAMN HIFALUTIN ARCHITECTS!
/end whining
More phallic architecture. <yawn>
I see Donnas point. It's kinda like people don't want to see the human side...the mortal...they want a shrine to the mighty "dear leader." I think FG actually had a nice concept of the content just don't like the clumsy design. But yeah, it seems that the people criticizing the content are not too different from the Koreans who don't want to see baby pics of the dear leader Kim Jung un is his underoos. As far as the design goes...I personally think it sucks.
I'll whine... I think that the columns in the NBM are too big. But at least they have entasis, and they actually support something other than a driving range fence...
;)
and lack of imagination leads to ... Columbine shootings
TERRIFYING!
hey speaking of columbine you should ask that not 'c' number 2 about it. he 'nods in agreement' when his 'nuke the hamptons' devotees suggest that dylan and eric were on to something ...
the column as a monument isn't supposed to bear anything other than a narrative. gehry's project is as traditional as it gets. unwrap trajans column. I have no problem with despairing over people's ignorance about architecture, except that im not going to waste my time despairing over peoples ignorance and idiocy. Isn't that what we're here for, to know a lotta shit about architecture and defend it against the Issas and thayers of the world?
"Your post above suggests that we should not have any Gothic cathedrals, San Francisco Victorian houses, or IMacs because they were weird and bizarre and maybe even degenerate when first presented."
You might like it to suggest that, but infact it dosen't, just like you might like to think I hate you simply becasue I disagree with you. Both gothic cathedrals and most SF victorians where designed by carpenters and masons to communicate to people the way architecture always has, through form and decoration. Do you really think that every new style was viewed as wierd and bizzare? It seems you are stuck on the modernist nostalgia that being obtuse, and therefore above the hoi poloi is the qualification for excellence in architecture. I guess that's were the shockitecture meme comes from, the need to be a badboy rebel, even when the academies are long gone. Actually, the academies are back, they just traded the classicist mask for a modernist/conceptual mask. Being wierd and bizzare means you are cool, except when everyone is trying to be the wierdest, then it's all the same bullshit. If you're loved, there's something suspect, becasue being loved is scary and potentially harmful, yet we all crave it. Infact, we can't live a healthy life without it, so no I don't hate you, Gehry, or Modernism. What I hate is this additude that if somehting isn't over intellectuallized, it's somehow defficient. It's just not true, and somehow contributes to our mostly banal and ugly landscape. When we negate a basic need to communicate to be understood and instead communicate rather to stand apart, simply becasue there are aspects of others we don't agree with or find repelant. It just smacks of defeatism to me. Especially now when there are many possible calamities on the horizon, like climate warming. We should be finding things in common, rather than smuggly laughing at those who "don't get it".
Do the columns at the National Building Museum have a narrative that would make them more interesting? Is there a hidden metaphore that people don't get? Might their juxtaposition with the smaller columns have something to do with their interest? Wether they have a narrative or not is irrelevant though, just as most metaphores in buildings becasue that's not how people read architecture for the most part. What are the metaphores in the Tri-Beca warehouses that I'm missing, becasue a sunset walk in that hood is the closest I'll ever get to heaven. It's like a person who says, well, 'I meant to say 'bla bla bla' but your too stupid to understand so you took it the wrong way. At some point, don't you empathize with that person and simply learn to communicate better? Some people just don't care, infact setting themselves apart from others is a way to make them feel better about themselves. This constant calling out those that don't see it your way as being ignorant is no different than a stupid upper class person, a righteous christian, or some Ivy league prat. It's all just smoke and mirrors if you ask me.
"Isn't that what we're here for, to know a lotta shit about architecture and defend it against the Issas and thayers of the world?" Nailed it. You need to get your head out of the well boy, it's not as scary as you think. All though, I didn't grow up in your shoes, so you very well might have something to fear. Have you being watching the FDR series on PBS? Great stuff. We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Maybe that's what Olaf meant by non bullshit bullshit.
What I hate is this additude that if somehting isn't over intellectuallized, it's somehow defficient. It's just not true, and somehow contributes to our mostly banal and ugly landscape.
Yes, because every Fypon-and-EIFS-and-asphalt strip mall is so over-intellectualized. *That* is what makes them ugly, the bucketloads of theory the designers bring to them.
I LOL'd, EKE. Though I also think it raises a legitimate question: does entasis, or an intentional rejection of it, matter any more in our very flat world?
Donna, Maybe I should have explained myself better. There will always be a certain percentage of builder grade strip mall work and there has always been. But the builder grade stuff before modernism is much more loved than the recent crop. You should see the stuff they preserve in DC and how well it polishes up. Some run of the mill 1920's car dealership with off the shelf decorations is now one of the hottest restaurants on 14th street, LeDiplomate.
What does this have to do with the price of coffee, you might ask? Look at the difference between 'academic' work today and 'builder' work, vs. academic work before modernism and its corresponding builder work. You may not have noticed, but the two in the former tend to be from two different worlds while the two in the latter look related, kind of like the city slicker and his country cousin, different in sophistication maybe but deffinatly related. To see this quickly one need look no further than professional magazines of today vs. back then. I wondered why that might be. Architects salivate over old Sears bungalow neighborhoods today, yet sniker over McMansions.
Becasue the over-intellectualized work of the academy today lives in a cloistered world and is almost incomprehensible to even the cognoscente, in large part by design. I had a professor that used to say, 'I love that which I can't understand', becasue it implied a certain depth and intellectual rigor. That's not to say it has no merrit, but like Eisenman's Decon, somethings are better left to French intellectuals. Anyway, the point is, I used to see tons of students glaze over at this kind of drivel yet they had to play along to get by and even master the art of BS if they went all in. Yet most looked at it as a right of passage and thus became cynical about the profession, discarding any of their ofiginal enthusiasm for the profession, the kind you hear from clients who say 'I always wanted to be an architect'. Consequently, many of them leave school thinking that traditional work is pastiche, yet to secure work from the local developer who "knew" that homey shit sold either had to convince them otherwise or settle for sprinkling some phypon crap over a shed. Never mind that their spouses would say, I ain't living in a glass box...that might work for your thesis project, but I want a cape cod. Just look at Eisenman or just about any of my old Pratt professors. Not practicing what you preach used to be a sign of BS.
Now some people on blogs like this entertain themselves laughing at the schlock out there without trying to understand how to change things and content themselves by calling people ignorant. I too cringe at that stuff, but it's too easy to simply laugh and live in my own bubble as if there where some inpenertable gulf between me and them. I understand why people chose this path, but I don't think it's as inevitable as you seem to believe. All those photos of fypon you like to post are indeed funny/sad, but every town and subdivision has hundreds of examples. It's too easy. And yes, some overloaded original vicrorian pile used to make academic architects laugh and even today, but why is it that those buildings are still more loved than the average modernist ranch burger, or why do they still build McMansion pastiche boxes of disposable crap?
I don't think I have all the answeres and I certainly don't think villanizing modernism (as a style) is the answer. But I am interested in looking at history and contemporary science to better understand this phenomenom, and I do think ideological thinking is an impediment, the kind that academics seem to revel in. I hope this makes my point clearer, but if we disagree in the future, it's not becasue I hate you. I just think you're being a tad lazy, at least intellectually. Speaking of lazy, what's flat about our world?
Thayer, this above post is the kind of post I was accustomed to from you when I said somewhere a couple weeks ago that I enjoy arguing with Thayer-D because at least he brings some nuance to the discussion. Then, I kid you not, 5 minutes after I posted that you attacked me for being an elitist.
Thayer, here, on this thread, I explained why I find most commentary on architecture ignorant and you attack me for being an elitist. Yes, sometimes I'm lazy about fully explaining myself when posting here, because jeepers we have these same arguments over and over and because we can use shorthand when speaking with other architects, but I'm not intellectually lazy.
I do believe in expertise. I'm far more educated and sophisticated in my views on architecture than most non-architects; I'd say I rank somewhere in the middle or lower than most of my fellow architects. One of the reasons I'd rank myself fairly low is that I'm not an idealogue at all - in fact I'm generally too able to find some level of agreement with so many sides of an argument. But when it comes to simpleminded things like attacking Gehry *because* he's been labeled a starchitect, or rejecting the idea that a stylistic diversity might be welcome in maintaining a vibrant historic street, or refusing to believe years of research showing that surface parking lots are detrimental to urban streetscapes (the issue currently facing the city where I live), I'm just not going to bother holding back. I *do* know better: 8 years of school, a professional registration, and 25 years of practice mean I do know more than Joe the Plumber about the design of the environment.
The world is flat because one of the things we're still trying to learn in the internet era is how to accommodate expertise when everyone has an equal platform for shouting their opinion. People stop vaccinating their children because of the incorrect views of an actress (FFS), in but one example. It's not elitist to look for credentials when hearing an opinion.
That said, nothing about Gehry's work is academic, intellectualized elitism, and as far as I recall he's the first one to say so. He's an artist who happens to be an architect, too.
Thayer, i think you're dumb, ok? i think youre the epitome of faux 'fair and balanced' thinking.
i think you do shitty lip service to being open and interested. i think you have bad taste.
i think you have an ugly chip on your shoulder. i think your calamities on the horizon are a cheap appeal like
"think about the children!"
so, yeah, i said some shit about columns and narratives, and then you wrote some shit on the internet in response.
Or not so much in response, but trying to use the words in a different way, because you did not make an argument
nor address it to anyone.
So let me say it again. Trajan's column. Lets be concrete. Its, say, 100' feet tall. 11 feet in diameter.
And it has a narrative relief which extends the full height of the column.
Can you not make the conceptual jump to how gehry's project participates in the history of architecture?
Can you not unwind trajan's column and dare to imagine what that might look like? can you not acknowledge that this type of thinking is unavailable to a number of people SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY HAVE SPENT ZERO TIME WITH THE HISTORY OF ARCHITETURE
AND DONT KNOW ITS PRECENDENTS?
No one is talking about imaginary da vinci code metaphors in the national building museum. thats your bullshit dodge which segues into another dodge.
im talking about architecture: columns and friezes and pediments. when a column becomes a monument.
you need to get your head out of your ass.
I don't think you know what the fuck youre doing.
Donna, I also believe in expertise, just not for the sake of looking down my nose. And I'm not the only one who reads your "deeply ignorant" comment and others as exactly what it is, unless you want to deconstruct even the most unambiguous words in the english language. But you're not alone, we all do it to a degree. Can't help it sometimes. I think lot's of people are deeply ignorant like boy in a well who can't go through a post without telling me to fuck off or some such penetrating comment. I'm with you on knowing more than Joe the Plumber, but truth be told, there are many Joe the Plumbers in architecture if you can look beyond the facade and recognise a blow hard for what he or she is. I also agree that the starchitect lable is stupid...how many people here would give their right leg to trade places with one of the annointed ones? Not me I can assure you (young kids and all) but I actually like a lot of Gehry's work, just not this design. People have a right to like or dislike things without being labled as part of what I agree is the most ignorant part of the Republican party. (Refering to butt-crack Joe).
ANd thank you (sincerely) for explaining the flat world thing too. I can be just as lazy intellectually, especially when the theory book reads like a code book. I consider myself an intellectual and a deplore the anti-intellectual streak in this country, but I will say I prefer them having to 'walk the plank' in America rather than the European fashion of swooning over the first run-on sentence. If you can get through to the masses a little, it just means that there's probably not as much bullshit involved. (Mark Twain et al) Credentials do matter, but one of the things I like aobut the internet is there can be an open market for ideas and may the best or most interesting ones rise to the surface. I really think there's a democratic aspect to this in the face of the gargantuan enterprises buying everything up from agriculture to art. But let's not dodge behind the "show me your papers" mentality when talking about how it feels to be around art. I might not get all the metaphors (or care) that Gehry or Michelangelo throw my way, but I have every right to say it feels like crap. I know I'm treading into Fox News territory where they pass hatred off for how they feel in the gut, but I'm talking about art, not school policies or climate change.
Also, I think your totally right about Gehry disavowing the over-intellectualization of architecture. He is an artist. Infact, that's one of the reasons I liked him. It's refreshing sometimes to see a sculptural buildings for just that, sculpture, rather than have to listen to Rem tell me all about whatever the fuck he goes on about. But in this design, the concept (which I like in concept) seems to be its only redeeming feature. Like the Vietman Memorial, great concept, and the fact that it comes through so poigniantly in reality says a lot for the designer's talent and minimalism in general wether it be the traditional or modernist or combo variety. But to dislike this fenced compound for giants dosen't mean you are an idiot or harbor fascist tendancies. Nor does one have to throw a bunch of classical columns on the site, although I don't think there's anything wrong with that, conceptually at least. It's just that this design feels wrong, especially given Eisenhower's reaction to the concentration camps and the fact that it's in a city square, all be it an ugly one (becasue of it's bald modernist surroundings, let's face it).
Anyways, I appreciate that we can have this back and forth, and I will refrain from calling you an elitist, if you'll refrain from calling people who don't always get it as ignorant, becasue I "feel" like you're not, for what it's worth. I just wish as a profession we would try and understand what seems like a very human instinct to decorate our surroundings and not outlaw the use of some decorations (traditional) in favor of others (modernist). Let's teach both well, and not act like one is superior to the other. They are the same instinct, just maybe not one's cup of tea. I will say, when architects give me almost nothing to contemplate (I'm looking at you Holland!), it's a bit depressing. I kid with the Dutch though, I love them and their country. Especially Amsterdam!
To ma' boy in a well,
"Can you not unwind trajan's column and dare to imagine what that might look like? can you not acknowledge that this type of thinking is unavailable to a number of people SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY HAVE SPENT ZERO TIME WITH THE HISTORY OF ARCHITETURE
AND DONT KNOW ITS PRECENDENTS?"
I'll answer in order. Yes, I can 'unwind' a stupid fucking triumphalist column, but can you understand that to most people, a bald giant column is a bald giant column? And one dosen't or shouldn't have to have taken some History of Architecture class to be able to get it, it should speak on multiple levels, and even if it didn't, can you get it through your thick scull that it still might be unattractive, and that looks actually matter? How many times do posters here change their look (on that little photo) to communicate something about themselves? Do you need to go to fashion school to 'read' those things? By the way, stop telling people to fuck off if you want to be taken seriously. Telling someone to take their head out of their ass is a bit strange coming from someone who's "in a well".
Donna : I think people are ignorant for not thinking that the story of Ike is important: small town Kansas boyhood achieving greatness. Most commenters seem to only care about celebrating Eisenhower's MILITARY achievements, because rah rah America fuck yeah, I guess.
Then again, Hitler's story was that of a small town Braunau am Inn boyhood achieving a fantastic infamy....if we're talking about before and after, relatively humble and thereafter iconic.
Why should a small town Kansas boyhood matter? What's with the Hollywoodisation?
I suggest that both views are ignorant: that of a noncritical celebration of military achievements as well as that of a benign irrelevant puerile celebration of small town boy made good. Not surprisingly, these two find parallels in the Hollywood imagination: celebration of violence and fantastic corniness devoid of complexity, moral ambiguity and so on. Brains being blown out and little children discovering shy fawns approaching them in their backyard.
Can a critical spirit be incorporated within a memorial or is a memorial necessarily uncritical of its subject of patronage? I mean, lets also recall Ike's other accomplishments (already posted here), which would give a different meaning on what this nice young boy grew up to be...or this brave pristine Olympus of a war hero could also be up to:
..............
From Ike: Cold-Blooded Mass Murderer By Willis A. Carto
Certain individuals are planning to build a memorial in Washington to Dwight D. Eisenhower—a multimillion dollar project to be laid on the backs of American taxpayers. The project has gotten as far as it has because no one has had the guts to point out that Eisenhower is literally the last person in the world who should be honored by the American people because his record clearly shows him to be a mass murderer. In addition to his dismal record as a military commander whose appointment by Franklin Roosevelt was purely political and had nothing whatsoever to do with merit, the full facts about this person must be seen, acknowledged and weighed. The most outstanding fact about Eisenhower is his cold-blooded murder of some 2 million German soldiers who had honorably surrendered in 1945. Instead of treating these soldiers as prisoners of war, as he was bound to do under the Geneva Convention, Eisenhower invented a new category, designating them as “disarmed enemy personnel,” thus adopting the doubletalk of a pettifogging shyster lawyer and in his twisted mind justifying his crime. And then Eisenhower murdered these soldiers, penning them up behind barbed wire and letting them starve to death, subject to the heavy rainfall and the cold winter weather of 1945. He ordered anyone who tried to free them or even feed them to be shot by the armed American guards he stationed around the enclosure. Doubters must study this. It is truly a horror story. Thanks are owed to the Canadian, James Bacque, for exposing this in his book, Other Losses: An Investigation Into the Mass Deaths of German Prisoners, and to Herbert L. Brown in The Devil’s Handiwork: A Victim’s View of “Allied” War Crimes
..................................
OPERATION KEELHAUL : GENOCIDE BY THE 'ALLIES'
In 1945, General Dwight Eisenhower ordered that "Operation Keelhaul" be put into effect. This involved rounding up and shipping back to "their countries of origin" ALL the refugees from communism: men, women and children, soldier or civilian, male or female, even though many of them had been fighting on OUR side during the war. Since all of Eastern Europe was then under Communist domination, sending these people back was, quite literally, a sentence of death, some by immediate execution and the rest by slow extermination from overwork and malnutrition in the Soviet slave labor camps in Siberia.
These people were rounded up at bayonet point, forced into freight cars and shipped off to a terrible fate. There was no accurate count kept but the MINIMUM figure was 2,000,000 people and a maximum has been set at 5,000,000. The true numbers may never be known, NEVER! The elimination of all these anti-Communist people made the Communist domination of Eastern Europe MUCH easier. And the American people were kept blissfully unaware of this action which Eisenhower enforced rigidly, even though it violated international law, the laws of his own country and laws of humanity.
I'm not really buying the "unwinding of Trajan's Column" reading. I've followed the news about the memorial quite closely, and I've never heard anything about that. Maybe some critic developed that reading of it, but if haven't seen it. And I have never heard that that was a reading that Gehry had in mind while designing the memorial.
If that was an intended reading of the memorial, well, in my opinion it falls short. There is nothing in detailing of the columns or screens that would reinforce that reading of it. Nothing that would really lead me to see a reference to Trajan's Column, over, say, a drive-in movie screen, a driving range fence, or a roll of paper towels (now with a decorative tree pattern!).
The key to Trajan's Column is that its decorative embellishment is spiraling and it's a narrative. It tells a story. Gehry's design is nothing like that. It's a screen stretched between two big, featureless poles. Let's stop calling them "columns".
Actually, Operation KEELHAUL was the last of several repatriations to the USSR under an agreement with Stalin in exchange for US POWs in German camps in Soviet territory, and the total number was around 1,000. Many of the repatriated were Russians who had fought for the Nazis such as the XV SS Cossack Cavalry Corps. As a matter of record the UK and the US also jailed or executed a number of citizens for treason during the war.
War crimes abounded on all sides, and in fact the Allies had to carefully select exactly which German crimes were prosecuted at Nuremberg because they were in fact guilty of many of the same ones on a much larger scale.
Aside from that there were > 30m refugees in Europe after the war. The continent's infrastructure from transportation to government structure to food and industrial production was decimated. Repatriation was the only way to deal with such vast numbers of displaced people in such impossible circumstances. It is estimated that >2/3 of the 90m casualties of WW2 were from starvation.
tammuz, we all know how evil the US is, so you can go back to your Palestine thread now.
Miles I think we make columns of TV sets playing Ike's farewell address over and over in every language and call it a day. ...but no one wants to remember that speech, its too critical of the industrial military complex.:::::::::::::::::;;; going to agree with miles twice in one thread, yes Tammuz t a m m u z go take your empty intellectual dumps in your designated thread. Does tamu write his stuff first in french and use babblefish to translate? Illuminati pot dub step holy cows apes religion
Miles, again from that quote:
Instead of treating these soldiers as prisoners of war, as he was bound to do under the Geneva Convention, Eisenhower invented a new category, designating them as “disarmed enemy personnel,” thus adopting the doubletalk of a pettifogging shyster lawyer and in his twisted mind justifying his crime. And then Eisenhower murdered these soldiers, penning them up behind barbed wire and letting them starve to death, subject to the heavy rainfall and the cold winter weather of 1945. He ordered anyone who tried to free them or even feed them to be shot by the armed American guards he stationed around the enclosure
Yes, clearly I'm not a white north American who builds a library of anglo-saxonic wars spelling out the glories of her or his civilization; rather, I'm inclined to see the disasters left in their wake. However, this is also specific topic.
To build a memorial to him is to commemorate him for greatness...but what and how is this greatness understood? This should be a concern. Wouldn't that be fair to ask? Yes, Eisnehower is known for raising an alarm over the industrial military complex -albeit having , necessarily, benefitted from it,..but how about a legacy that is kept under the shadows in preference for a reading that this memorial embodies: military achievements - and he has been criticized that he is not a great strategist anyway - and the puerile benign intrigue over boy-made-good story to win the hearts of the good people. How about war crimes, as mentioned above, that should merit attention.
I suggest that, unlike memorials to Martin Luther King, Malcom X, figures from the American Indian Movement, and I am sure a hoard of white activists who supported rights across the board, Eisenhower was a relic of an empire that still exists. It is not the personal merit that the establishment finds within the likes of this guy but rather the merit endowed in him as a part of the history of power within this Empire.
That is why I'm wondering what would an "anti-establishment" (a classification that culturally is not universal) memorial to Eisenhower look like.
As for establishment, I think that polarity setup by Gehry is actually quite faithful; if I may say, within pyshco- gendered terms merely used for convenience not so much out of conviction (not limited to sex of course; I know women with more "man" than me) , it pleases the "man" in one (war hero) as well as the "woman" in one (boy from small town with a great future ahead). Which brings back Hollywood deliberately polarly situated clichés: shooting someone's brains out and a child hugging his little pony. Hollywood knows how to sell to its primary audience.
And from that point of view, Gehry also succeeds in tapping into the US imagination actually.
Eisenhower is a relic who realized what he was involved in after it was over, this can happen to the most conscientious person or say an honest boy from Kansas. War is a crime. The notion that there are war crimes is a strange one, one that suggests parts of war are ok or civil. So discussing war crimes or hoping a anti-memorial could express these war crimes is silly. To go to war to end the war is what is typically memorialized. The list tammuz proposes suggests people that were agents in a moment of change for the improvement/advancement of civilization. By this definition then Eisenhower is no different then this list and more importantly he realized the error in the direction caused by this change in civilization, which makes him different then tammuz list. So the memorial itself is paradoxical. The Japanese tourists often smile for photos at pearl harbor and the Americans are more somber. It could be that kind of memorial. I think Gehry may be presenting this in his scheme effectively which means its a split design one that emotes confounding feelings and assumptions and for this matter the whole exercise is illuminating to what and why a memorial? Is it for the man, the actions in the rise of the military industrial complex, or is it a memorial to what he realized about the potential problems of such a complex? I would be interested in Demilit and Orhan's opinion on what this memorial, if one should exist, should be?
this is his memorial.
I drank enough to kill a hipster fish in willy burg brooklyn tonight. .as that is where I was. the last bus to the old bridge of nj. I have one thing to say - Amen brother Orhan Amen. My county was never meant to be a military pawn. We are free men who believe in free being.
... and hamas sure fires off a lot of rockets
amen, brother orhan, amen.
^
World sure is complicated. Man do I love this archinct, ha
I still don't understand why Eisenhower is getting a memorial.
Moreover, why are his damn granddaughters considered important "Stakeholders"? They're not paying for it. It's not their land. Big damn deal that he bounced them on his knee. The memorial is the project by a nation to memorialize one of its leaders. The granddaughters should get 2 votes out of 300+ million. Just like everyone else.
Orhan's last post is interesting. That quote and its reminder of Eisenhower's warning of the Military Industrial complex, when measured against the current status of military overspending in the US, reveal that the country that is building a Memorial to a "Great Man" has completely abandoned the things he actually believed in most deeply.
Burn it all down and start over, then? Yes, the world is complicated.
Burning it all down is the laziest solution, though.
Hi eke!
How are you?
How does the source of a reading contribute to its validity?
Is the source more important than the idea?
Do Gehry's artistic intentions entirely circumscribe
how his proposal exists in history (especially when building in a national capital)? Personally, i dont think so.
the reading is mine.
its how i locate the potential of his proposal, via a dialogue with history.
i dont think its the most immediately attractive proposal, but i think it has a lot of potential
and is worth thinking about, and not just casually thinking about, but architecturally thinking about,
using architectural ideas like the column and the pediment.
whats a pediment? its where the sculpture and the story go! Well, now we have our variation on it:
a filigreed block of space. One which could be excellent to be in.
of course there is no specific reference to trajans column in the project. its a reading by an architect who embraces a long view of history
like i said, the reading is mine.
if yours is limited to drive in movie screens, well so be it. I bet frank would dig that.
Would it be better if the scrims twirled and spiraled like every other gehry building that people loved or hated?
he's making a decision for content over form. And i personally think the content is worthwhile.
If changing the names of the columns helps your position, then maybe your position isnt very strong.
Hi thayer!
why dont you fuck off!
I could give a fuck about how you take it; up the ass or seriously or with two sugars.
I'd take you seriously if you ever had something to say that was architecturally relevant or even slightly architecturally interesting.
which you usually dont. and by all means, base your arguments on my screen name! I've had a few and they've caused some fights!
and i've had a few while i was writing this!
when i say 'filigreed block of space' im saying that looks matter, but we all know that looks dont matter for eyes that cannot see,
as Le FERGUSON Corbusier once said.
Ultimatly, I'm not sure why we need a memorial to Eisenhower myself. I think he was a great leader and a great man (human), but I also think Jane Jacobs and Rachel Carson where also. I guess the idea of the size and prominance of this memorial speaks to how important the fight against Nazi Germany was. I just don't know if picking out one General on such a scale makes sense. The Civil War memorials that where sprinkled around traffic circles show the typical 'dude on a horse' sculpture at the center of these spaces, but they don't overwhelm the spaces. I think that makes more sense rather than this overblown stalinist thing of Gehry's. It dosen't have to be a realist sculpture, maybe a hunk of Serraesque metal that expresses the anguish of those times (yada), but this design is a thesis concept on steroids. Great for generating ideas, bad in reality.
"he's making a decision for content over form." - boy in a well
And that's why, on the whole, modernism has failed to connect with the public, it fails to connect becasue for better or for worse, architecture is a visual medium. 'Content' all you want, but if you neglect form, how is it supposed to communicate? Knowing history certainly makes one's reading of the built environment richer, problem is if you are only speaking to those in the know, it is bound to fail more broadly, and if that's none of your concern, you are by definition, elitist. Maybe there should be speakers announcing the "content" on loop, or a ticker tape a la Jenny Holzer between the poles spewing out all the text your imperialist brain is too stupid to get. There's your unwindingTrajan's Column. Too literal? Content, I'm afraid, is in the mind of the beholder. Form, is in the mind of anyone present. Neglect the latter and you've failed.
I kind of like this new, polite boy in a well. Mr. Cheerful!
Quondom,
There was no need to mention that which you say because that wasn't the point. The content is not shared while the form is, so while beholder and anyone present are the same, the difference is in how each might interpret content, especially regarding abstraction. Physical form is a 3-d reality I think we can all agree on, unless one is tripping.
As to how the public relates with modernism, I won't challenge you as that is definatly up to one's interpretation. But like has been shown over and over here, there's ample evidence about how the public connects with modernism. Like a fundamentalist though, you might not be comfortable with the evidence.
http://archinect.com/forum/thread/84759019/why-won-t-you-design-what-we-the-public-want
I'm not sure why we need a memorial to Eisenhower
Because it plays into the jingoistic fervor that is the driving force behind the US.
Physical form is a 3-d reality I think we can all agree on, unless one is tripping.
But this just isn't true. Greek Revival columns mean stability and truth to some and mean oppression and abuse of power to equally as many.
Donna and Quondom,
Greek colums (wether revival or not) will infact mean different things to different people, but all people will see that they are stout and lined with a simple cornice and no feet. Agreeing with what they look like is different than what they symbolize. Not sure hwo this is so difficult to get. I'll try again.
"he's making a decision for content over form." Maybe this isn't true in this case, I don't know, but for those who neglect or dimminish the sensory impact infavor of the conceptual content, expect your design will suffer. I'm not trying to diminish content, but I think form is equal or more important becasue that is what most people will read, whether positively or not. In the case of the Eisenhower memorial, there have been so many negative readings of its content that at some point you have to acknowlege this is a failed design. If you read unwrapped classical columns or the small town Kansas boyhood in this design, good for you. But to assume you are ignorant if you don't share that or another reading is jsut dumb and not very democratic IMHO.
I so wish Gehry would cut bait, the committee that is pushing all this nonsense would get their way, and they'd build something embarrassing like Duany's proposal:
Just because it would be entertaining.
I've been a champion of Gehry's proposal all along.
1) They hired him, and the committee liked his proposal before they didn't.
2) Unlike other monument sites, this was a tricky urban-scale negotiation of a large busy intersection surrounded by undistinguished office buildings. The design problem was try to make such a place special. The scheme: taking ownership of the space, controlling its vistas via the screens and paths, using large scaled interventions at the centerpiece in order to focus attention on the main event.
All necessary and admirable in my book. Maybe, as long as we keep electing people like those on this Congressional panel, the same folks who don't have the principles or the guts to stand up to the 'military/industrial' complex Eisenhower warned about, we don't deserve better than the vacuous, mute, intentionally bland Duany solution.
Oh god that's dreadful. Guns as columns.
"I designed the Eisenhower Memorial relentlessly, from beginning to end, to see whether I can communicate with the regular folks," Duany says.
.........
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