Thesis Positioning Statement #5
The architecture of memorial is a fascinating field when considering the broader issues of control within the built environment. The monument has the innate ability to fashion and shape the communal consciousness and dictate the priorities of memory. They can be an aggressive political tool, as is evidenced in the former USSR, or they can be a sombre reminder of the devastation of war, as is seen in the countless unmarked graves in Flanders, Dieppe and the Somme. Almost always, though, they represent the potential held in future endeavour. They reflect on the past, but the goal is to represent the future as it relates to certain ideals.
 |
Khatyn Memorial Complex, Belarussian SSR, 1970. |
The 9/11 memorials will open in New York in three weeks and it is interesting to study their formal strategies and tactics for invoking memory. Just as the modernist avant garde of the 1920’s rejected literal representation strategies as a response to the horrific trauma of the great war, so too have Michael Arad and Peter Walker in the design of the 9/11 Memorial. Walter Benjamin, in reference to that era, argued in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction that the literal imagery of the camera had removed the previously held authority of painting to express the commonly held idea of reality[1]. And “so too have other forms of cultural production…been divested of their power to capture universal meaning.”[2] It is not appropriate to present the reality of the incident through symbolic or figurative codes of meaning, and so the poignancy is reflected in the act of remembrance through abstraction of form.
 |
9/11 Memorial. Michale Arad & Peter Walker. 2011. |
This level of abstraction has continued apace since the end of the Second World War. Sculptors in England during the 40’s and 50’s, in particular Jacob Epstein, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, rejected entirely the representational aspects of their work, preferring instead to address the intuitive and intellectual understanding associated with the abstract. All three sculptors participated in memorialising sculpture, but their approach, as Alan Borg notes, “did not conform to the public perception of the memorial style.”[3] The presentation of the abstract as the memorialising tool stems from several things. First, is the understanding of the memorials’ function in preserving the established history of the event. Second is that after the direct representation of mechanical means of cultural production, the more traditional means of victorious representation (winged angels, figurative soldiers etc) are no longer easily applied to the memorial style, especially considering the pyrrhic nature of most wartime events. And third, and perhaps most importantly, is the kind of future dialogue that the memorial wishes to participate in. It is here that the potential for control exists within the monument.
It is understood that the kind of cataclysmic event that warrants memorialisation presents an opportunity for a dichotomy change. As is described in Joe Kerr’s essay, The Uncompleted Monument: London, War, and the Architecture of Remembrance in the book The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space (2001), The Blitz in London during World War II constituted just such a paradigm shift in Governmental approach. The new Labour Government of 1945, backed solidly across the political spectrum, invoked the potential of a utopian future, not with triumphalist monuments or victorious architecture, but with government sponsored programmes housed within a new architectural language. “In a very real sense, the houses, hospitals, and schools that came to dominate the landscape of London were monuments to a yet unrealised, hypothetical, and utopian future”[4]. The pyrrhic victory of the War allowed the government to shift its focus from foreign enemies, to social enemies, as Keynesian policies concentrated on rebuilding the shattered remains of the country. The large-scale urban interventions of Ernö Goldfinger and the Smithsons presented this utopia in a new, ultra-modern style, using the formal language of dynamism and permanence. The massive trauma event of WWII fed the desire for change in the population and the Welfare State acted as the vehicle to memorialise that trauma, but also to usher in the dream of possibility in the future. Once again the idea of abstraction balances reverent retrospection, with the possibility of a new future.
 |
| Trellcik Tower, Ernö Goldfinger, 1966 |
It can also be argued very convincingly that the socialist architecture of the USSR played an integral role in the proliferation of the communist methodology. Bold designs depicted in a new architectural lexicon fill the urban environment with potential and positivity for prospect of the future. The predominance of the state as both land owner and client ensured the control of the message of a utopian future through architectural development.
 |
Tbilisi Administrative Building, G. Chakhava & Z. Dzalagania, |
The potential for control embodied in the typology of memorial warrants serious study in this investigation. Formal language is so directly invoked in order to garner a broad range of responses at the individual, the local and the national scales. It effectively mobilises political opinion, and solidifies national identity no matter what form it takes. That there must be a traumatic event (either in victory or defeat) is limiting, but also provides real potential when choosing programmatic applications for this kind of intervention.
[1] Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction in Illuminations, Ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn. (1970). P217-251.
[2] Joe Kerr, The Uncompleted Monument: London, War and the Architecture of Remembrance in The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space. (2002) P 76.
[4] Joe Kerr, The Uncompleted Monument: London, War and the Architecture of Remembrance in The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space. (2002) P 81.
