Over the past three years the “memorial” has taken center stage in architectural debate...the focus has been in physical form (attached to location, time and place)
However these types of projects fail in certain ways to capture the powerful range of impact disasters (both “terror” and natural) have on various aspects on all of us everywhere in all sorts of ways (political, social etc)
Has the contemporary memorial lost it's ability to truly represent the wide range of issues and peoples they intend to include? Should we as designers and architects think of alternative modes of representation? Here is one sketch that is very interesting. Another one might be the missing people flyers posted around NY post 9/11
two parts:
what is the purpose of a memorial
what can architecture do for this
1
a memorial is a ritualistic thing--people have a strong tendency to associate place with events, though the fact an action occurred at any specific location is often coincidental, irrelevant to its meaning (often an abstract social interaction: war, revolution, settlement). place is somehow more solemn than artifact, so that we could commemorate a serious tragedy by association to a place, while association with small objects would seem more like making souveniers and inappropriately trivial (...though i think the word 'souvenier' could be translated as 'memorial' couldn't it)
what we seek in a memorial then is a place which we can recognize, distinct from other places, and contemplate something maybe not related to this place at all. the architecture--it's like the monolith in Kubrick's 2001--it's just a placeholder for us to fixate on. the place itself is the important part.
2
assuming architecture must happen at the memorial (i think in the right place just a few rocks should be enough), itshould articulate a quality of place that already exists at the site. this rarely is a spatial or graphic thing, though those are the most common methods of architectural 'stamping'. many of the most successful memorials make geometric connections to world-systems magnitudes larger than the site itself--sites like stonehenge showing how the large motions of the sun relative to earth figure out on the ground. of course if everything did this it would be useless--the point is to find some such irreducable simple behaviour that may only loosely associate with the event we memorialize--stronger association comes best by habit not designed intent.
where would you want to go to think about these massive tragedies?
for me, it's the coast, the edge of an abyss which is not even empty, just unreachable, where the entire world seems believably reducable to brief disruptions of a ceaseless wave-sheet flowing nowhere.
well these are quite incomplete speculations but this is the path i would pursue. a good memorial might take an individual years of vague pre-cognition. i do think we risk trivializing the genre when we try to build too many too often, though eventually the good ones will stand through. are you working on some competetion/studio project or just soliciting thoughts?
I think the aids quilt is one of the best...part ad-hoc, part "official"... meaning down to the individual panel, but taken at a grande scale offers something else entirely. it's ability to travel, split up, scale dynamically...it's an impressive thing.
more and more I find myself thinking that the gravity given to sites/selections of "official" memorials (in the planning stages) leads to their undoing. in atttempting to please everybody involved they wind up pleasing nobody, and fail in the ways you mentioned. getting away from the "official" memorial (at least in some cases) may be just what we need.
I agree, manamana ... stumbled upon the Eyes Wide Open memorial in the park today. Thousands of soldiers' boots and Iraqi civilians' shoes ... a visceral experience. I know this treatment of artifacts is old, but it's still such a potent symbol ... so effective at humanizing the individual.
U guys might b interested to read about the memorial at Bhopal (India) for the victims of one of the worst industrial disasters in the world..at the abandoned factory site of Union Carbide.
The Indian govt floated a one stage international design competition earlier this year and a group of 20-something architects from New Delhi have been awarded the 1 billion rupee contract!!!
Very contemporary, research intensive and incoporates concepts that modern urban design is still grappling with...Good stuff..must read!
U guys might b interested to read about the memorial at Bhopal (India) for the victims of one of the worst industrial disasters in the world..at the abandoned factory site of Union Carbide.
The Indian govt floated a one stage international design competition earlier this year and a group of 20-something architects from New Delhi have been awarded the 1 billion rupee contract!!!
Very contemporary, research intensive and incoporates concepts that modern urban design is still grappling with...Good stuff..must read!
Nov 6, 05 3:04 am ·
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MEMORIAL TAKES CENTER STAGE in 21st CENTURY
Over the past three years the “memorial” has taken center stage in architectural debate...the focus has been in physical form (attached to location, time and place)
However these types of projects fail in certain ways to capture the powerful range of impact disasters (both “terror” and natural) have on various aspects on all of us everywhere in all sorts of ways (political, social etc)
Has the contemporary memorial lost it's ability to truly represent the wide range of issues and peoples they intend to include? Should we as designers and architects think of alternative modes of representation? Here is one sketch that is very interesting. Another one might be the missing people flyers posted around NY post 9/11
does anyone have any other alternative memorials?
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/national/20040909_THOUSAND_GRAPHIC/index_PICTURES.html
two parts:
what is the purpose of a memorial
what can architecture do for this
1
a memorial is a ritualistic thing--people have a strong tendency to associate place with events, though the fact an action occurred at any specific location is often coincidental, irrelevant to its meaning (often an abstract social interaction: war, revolution, settlement). place is somehow more solemn than artifact, so that we could commemorate a serious tragedy by association to a place, while association with small objects would seem more like making souveniers and inappropriately trivial (...though i think the word 'souvenier' could be translated as 'memorial' couldn't it)
what we seek in a memorial then is a place which we can recognize, distinct from other places, and contemplate something maybe not related to this place at all. the architecture--it's like the monolith in Kubrick's 2001--it's just a placeholder for us to fixate on. the place itself is the important part.
2
assuming architecture must happen at the memorial (i think in the right place just a few rocks should be enough), itshould articulate a quality of place that already exists at the site. this rarely is a spatial or graphic thing, though those are the most common methods of architectural 'stamping'. many of the most successful memorials make geometric connections to world-systems magnitudes larger than the site itself--sites like stonehenge showing how the large motions of the sun relative to earth figure out on the ground. of course if everything did this it would be useless--the point is to find some such irreducable simple behaviour that may only loosely associate with the event we memorialize--stronger association comes best by habit not designed intent.
where would you want to go to think about these massive tragedies?
for me, it's the coast, the edge of an abyss which is not even empty, just unreachable, where the entire world seems believably reducable to brief disruptions of a ceaseless wave-sheet flowing nowhere.
well these are quite incomplete speculations but this is the path i would pursue. a good memorial might take an individual years of vague pre-cognition. i do think we risk trivializing the genre when we try to build too many too often, though eventually the good ones will stand through. are you working on some competetion/studio project or just soliciting thoughts?
on the subject of alternative memorials -
I think the aids quilt is one of the best...part ad-hoc, part "official"... meaning down to the individual panel, but taken at a grande scale offers something else entirely. it's ability to travel, split up, scale dynamically...it's an impressive thing.
http://www.savethemall.org/moments/quilt.html
more and more I find myself thinking that the gravity given to sites/selections of "official" memorials (in the planning stages) leads to their undoing. in atttempting to please everybody involved they wind up pleasing nobody, and fail in the ways you mentioned. getting away from the "official" memorial (at least in some cases) may be just what we need.
I agree, manamana ... stumbled upon the Eyes Wide Open memorial in the park today. Thousands of soldiers' boots and Iraqi civilians' shoes ... a visceral experience. I know this treatment of artifacts is old, but it's still such a potent symbol ... so effective at humanizing the individual.
http://www.afsc.org/eyes/default.htm
U guys might b interested to read about the memorial at Bhopal (India) for the victims of one of the worst industrial disasters in the world..at the abandoned factory site of Union Carbide.
http://bhopalmemorial.blogspot.com/
The Indian govt floated a one stage international design competition earlier this year and a group of 20-something architects from New Delhi have been awarded the 1 billion rupee contract!!!
Very contemporary, research intensive and incoporates concepts that modern urban design is still grappling with...Good stuff..must read!
U guys might b interested to read about the memorial at Bhopal (India) for the victims of one of the worst industrial disasters in the world..at the abandoned factory site of Union Carbide.
http://bhopalmemorial.blogspot.com/
The Indian govt floated a one stage international design competition earlier this year and a group of 20-something architects from New Delhi have been awarded the 1 billion rupee contract!!!
Very contemporary, research intensive and incoporates concepts that modern urban design is still grappling with...Good stuff..must read!
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