On the 75th anniversary of D-Day, we reflect on the remaining architectural vestiges of World War II, an event that incurred the death of nearly 50,000,000 people and shifted the borders of countries and continents. 

In 1975, the theorist Paul Virilio published Bunker Archaeology, a documentation of some of the 1,500 bunkers that were built along the French shores by the German army as a defense against an anticipated invasion from the United Kingdom during World War II. "It all started - it was a discovery in the archeological sense of the term - along the beach south of Saint-Gucnolc during the summer of 1958. I was leaning against a solid mass of concrete, which I had previously used as a cabana." Through dramatic photo documentation, Virilio saw the bunkers as a way to merge the study of their physical attributes with the existential questioning of war and violence.

Virilio also used Bunker Archaeology as a way to express his own fascination with the scale of construction and destruction the fortifications made evident: "You could walk day after day along the seaside and never once lose sight of these concrete altars built to face the void of the oceanic horizon." 

The violence they once enabled was no longer in their then-current states: "I was most impressed by a feeling, internal and external, of being immediately crushed. The battered walls sunk into the ground gave this small blockhouse a solid base; a dune had invaded the interior space, and the thick layer of sand over the wooden floor made the place ever narrower. Some clothes and bicycles had been hidden here; the object no longer made the same sense, though there was still protection here."

The poetic documentation Virilio produced had left a powerful mark on the art and architecture communities as they both questioned the responsibility we all have towards elements of our shared history. Between 1994 and 1995, the artist Magdalena Jetelová took the same walk along the French shores with the intent of transforming these immovable structures - ravaged by an additional 40 years time than when Virilio had first encountered them - into canvases for anti-war art. Jetelová selected key quotes from Virilio's text and projected them onto the bunkers, with statements such as "ABSOLUTE WAR BECOMES THEATRICALITY" and "AREA OF VIOLENCE." 

Decades after their initial use, these hulking masses appear tired; exasperated; ruinous. They reflect a dark moment in our immutable past, but their subsequent functions for Virilio, Jetelová and others - as backdrop, metaphor or otherwise - demonstrate how we might make use of architectural vestiges with histories as heavy as their matter.