Emptiness is not nothing
But something that is there
That which indicates something is missing.Footnote 1
Like most architecture, designed memorial spaces can be perceived as collective efforts that rely on resources provided by political and financial powers. At the same time, memorial architecture, being an act of representation, touches upon the essence of architectural creation and the question of how space mediates some of the most intricate social and cultural processes. Both the predicament and the allure of the task of designing a memorial space became clear to me in a very personal quest to commemorate through architecture the Siege of Sarajevo (1992–95).Footnote 2 In 1992, when American architect Lebbeus Woods was working on his book War and Architecture, the destruction of Sarajevo and its citizens by heavy artillery and sniper fire was in full swing.Footnote 3 While one of the many targets was being destroyed – the city’s twin towers, ‘Momo & Uzeir’ – Woods made the pessimistic statement that the burning towers of Sarajevo were ‘markers of the end of an age of reason, if not reason itself, beyond which lies a domain of almost incomprehensible darkness’.Footnote 4 As a compassionate observer who entered the besieged city in the midst of the ongoing carnage, he preoccupied himself with Sarajevo’s architectural wounds. Intuitively recognizing a need for order and some sense of control that was lingering among its citizens, Woods focused on the city’s wounded tissue and looked at the smallest details, for example a damaged window, in an effort to preserve traces of war.
To understand destructed space, Woods aimed to make a distinction between architecture as a weapon of destruction, or part of the problem in war, and architecture as a system of protection. Along this typically Janus-faced characterization of architecture, he proposed architectural solutions for establishing the order needed for the continuation of life in peace. He termed them as ‘the scab’ and ‘the scar’, arguing that ‘the natural stages of healing might not be pretty, judged by conventional aesthetic standards, but they are beautiful in the existential sense.’Footnote 5 In this view, architecture can act as a symbol of the resilience of the human spirit and the will to live of those targeted for destruction.
My interest in the role of architects as creators of order in devastated environments started in the post-war atmosphere of Sarajevo, when making sense of things was a priority. After having been continuously exposed to severe urbicide for almost four years, in 1996 the city and its citizens faced the prospect of peace in a place defined by overwhelming architectural and psychological debris which now had to be confronted in its real scale and meaning. An eagerness to tell the story of survival was widely present among citizens, and it seemed to be getting stronger as life continued to be normalized and the eternal fire of the Second World War memorial in the centre of the city was lit again, exactly 50 years after ‘justice had vanquished two tyrannies, bringing forth a new paradigm of world history’.Footnote 6 At the same time, the ‘other’ side – the participants in the war who, actively or inactively, supported the destruction of the city – had and still have a different memory of events. As the issues surrounding possible ways of memorializing the war started to become more prominent, the complexities of the memorializing process began to unfold, demonstrating the contemporaneity of memory and the presence of counter-memory. In his contemplation on negative memory in the German collective consciousness, German historian Reinhart Koselleck touched upon three interlinked questions: who and what should be remembered, and how should it be done?Footnote 7 Observing through a lens of a designer whose experience was shaped by a post-conflict environment, my focus was inherently inclined to the ‘how’ conundrum, or more precisely the official (and to a lesser extent unofficial) memorials, because these are usually the most challenging and controversial assignments architects can receive. This is a daunting topic in the electric age where information is abounding and available to everyone, creating ‘memory of the multitude’ that ‘softens history, changing the parameters of the who, what and why of remembering’.Footnote 8
Monument versus Memorial?
While I was contemplating what a memorial for Sarajevo should be, on the other side of the Atlantic similar issues were raised in a difficult discussion about how to commemorate the events of 9/11 in New York. What was instantly clear, amid the arguments between those who fought for reconstruction and those who pleaded to leave the newly created void as a signifier, was that whatever form it took, the memorial had to carefully communicate the emotional tension and stay objective, informative and truthful. It seemed an impossible balancing act. If we understand representation of memory, both individual and collective, as ‘the function by which symbols, or simulacra, or surrogates, come to stand for some absent referent’, it is inviting to comprehend how this might manifest and what it means for memorial architecture in particular.Footnote 9 What are the symbols, simulacra or surrogates used in contemporary memorial projects? Now that the memorial for 9/11 is built, the question of how to design a structure as a signifier of something that is missing due to violent destruction remains relevant and equally as challenging.
The distinction between monument and memorial remains ambiguous. The two notions are continuously interchangeably used both in academia and practice. The general process of creating is similar for both typologies in that they are (almost always) directly faced with strong emotions and sentiments. And like in all design projects, there are restrictions of funding and resources. However, building a memorial is further complicated by the involvement of additional tasks such as preservation and questions of education and tourism. As a rule, all these aspects are the subject of multilayered views on a particular memory or set of memories and are deeply embedded in the political and social context. As well as these defining tasks, a memorial is normally the focal architectural edifice within its built context and is therefore perceived as a representation of that particular context (even if this is not necessarily the case), often becoming a frequented visiting attraction and mental signifier for that physical location in the collective imagination.
The extensively quoted remark by Robert Musil that ‘there is nothing in this world as invisible as a monument’ perhaps best describes the process of disregarding a monument’s power as an aide memoire.Footnote 10 In his 1927 essay, Musil was of course referring to the traditional notion of a public monument, an edifice dedicated to the memory of a person or an event, usually taking the form of a sculptural work installed on a pedestal.Footnote 11 The discussion about the invisibility of monuments implies that there is an expiry date for the monument’s performance of memory, related to the intricate set of circumstances that produced the monument in the first place. Referring to Musil’s observation, the scholar James E. Young argued that the reason for this invisibility is ‘the essential stiffness monuments share with all other images: as a likeness necessarily vitrifies its otherwise dynamic referent, a monument turns pliant memory to stone’.Footnote 12 In this sense, monuments imply an act of termination since monuments are seldom erected for the living, but the affective nature of a monument keeps memory alive for posterity.Footnote 13 The affective nature of a monument is what is often neglected, a tendency also recognized by Young, who argued that ‘too often, a community’s monuments assume the polished, finished veneer of a death mask, unreflective of a current memory, unresponsive to contemporary issues.’Footnote 14 The supposed short-term familiarity of public monuments, Peter Carrier argued, is
compounded by the long-term familiarity of a form of symbolic communication and cultivation of collective memory whose semantic and political function – urging us to understand and identify with, love or fear historical figures and events – harbours few surprises.Footnote 15
Hence the generic form of monuments fails in the face of dramatic changes of human perceptions and means of communication. Today, however, artists like Christo and Jean-Claude and, more recently, Tatzu Nishi make us rediscover monuments with long-passed expiry-dates by changing their context and literally bringing them closer to us through the use of contemporary architectural space.
The longevity of using the symbolic monument genre for communicating social and political messages has been consistently used throughout history. The French historian Françoise Choay argued that a monument entails the concept of a defence against the traumas of existence and that the affective nature of a monument rests upon its being an ‘antidote to entropy, to the dissolving action of time on all things natural and artificial, it seeks to appease our fear of death and annihilation’.Footnote 16 Hence, the power of a monument resides in its affective nature and the ability to stir up emotions in people with regards to the monument’s story. According to the Viennese art historian Aloïs Riegl, a monument in its oldest and most original sense is ‘a human creation, erected for the specific purpose of keeping single human deeds or events (or a combination thereof) alive in the minds of future generations’.Footnote 17 According to Riegl, the perception that future generations will have of a monument is dependent on the existing context, norms and values or the Kunstwollen or ‘artistic will’ of that epoch and how a monument responds to these.Footnote 18 Riegl recognized three types of monuments: intentional, unintentional and monuments possessing ‘age-value’.Footnote 19 In preservation, the first category, intentional monuments, is specific because these had a more or less protected status in the course of history, unlike the historic monument, a term introduced in the nineteenth century with the emergent interest in the preservation of historical heritage and the recognition of ‘style’. The intentional monument commemorating a person existed in many cultures, but it was only with the Renaissance, Riegl argues, when the notion of beauty was given a prominent place, did people begin to understand and appreciate monuments for their commemorative value, as part of their heritage and not simply a mere display of patriotic recollections.Footnote 20
An intentional monument in its original sense is not only an informative structure from a specific historical period, but also an engaging edifice invested with living memory. To this category belong only ‘those works which recall a specific moment or complex of moments from the past’.Footnote 21 Much later, art historian Horst Janson made a distinction between three categories of Western monuments: the funerary monument, the monument to historical ideas and events and the monument commemorating great men.Footnote 22 In principle, a commemorative monument is always built with the intention to last. However, this has often proved impossible and led many monuments to end up as mere signs of the failed infrastructure of memory they initially embodied, transforming them into uncanny or unwanted reality.Footnote 23 Looking closely to two national memorial sites, the Vél d’Hiv in Paris and the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, Carrier stressed that the essential significance of commemorative projects is in their ‘non-prescriptive heuristic stimuli that enable individuals to encounter and understand both the past and their relation to the past via representations of it’.Footnote 24
In memory studies, the term memorial is used interchangeably with the notion of a monument, and distinctions are rarely made between the two. This is also true in the field of architecture since designers often intertwine the two notions. In the late nineteenth century, there was a significant development in the design of public monuments, what Kirk Savage dubbed ‘spatial monument’, which moved from ‘an object of reverence to a space of subjective experience’.Footnote 25 In addition, as Sergiusz Michalski signalled in his history of public monuments, the years before the First World War were characterized by a certain zest for experiments in commemorative sculptures.Footnote 26 A more psychologically-oriented approach was introduced: the sculptural compositions descended from their high pedestals to stand eye to eye with their audience and enclose beholders into their space, thereby inviting more engagement with the monument.Footnote 27
Erika Doss demonstrated how in the American context the two words are used to depict a variety of commemorative projects, ranging from traditional stone obelisks to other facilities including parks, highways, libraries and so forth. This is the heritage of the post-WWII debate about ‘living’ memorials.Footnote 28 The word ‘memorial’ appears to be more popular, but there is also a hint that designers seem to perceive monuments as celebratory whereas memorials are commonly understood as spaces of a profoundly contemplative nature that can offer more possibilities.
Some aimed to establish parameters that turn a war monument into a memorial and hence argued for a symbolic repertoire that focuses on the acceptance of violence and recognition of sacrifice that enhances understanding of a debt by the living and thus their will to reciprocate – a memorial as
A sustenance for memory achieving significance for the past sacrifice in order that future devotion will require further commitment to confirm the social order and establishing the key social relationships that make life worth having or at least worth bearing.Footnote 29
This distinction in purpose and content was also recognized by philosopher and critic Arthur Danto, who explained:
Monuments make heroes and triumphs, victories and conquests, perpetually present part of life. The memorial is a special precinct extruded from life, a segregated enclave where we honor the dead. With monuments we honor ourselves.Footnote 30
Danto situated his argument in a discussion about the well-known Vietnam Veterans Memorial (VVM), designed by Maya Lin and inaugurated in Washington, DC in 1982, representing a memorial to defeat instead of victory. Danto perceived the memorial as a moral connection between the Washington Monument (1885) as a symbol of triumph and the Lincoln Memorial (1922) as a temple of submission. While this is perhaps true in this specific context, it cannot be taken as a formula since many monuments do invite retrospection, and at the same time memorials are not necessarily non-celebratory quiet precincts. After the VVM was erected, the opposing views in the bitter debates regarding the memorial’s appearance and meaning marked its first years. Consisting of two long dark granite walls inscribed with the names of the dead, cutting into the landscape, the memorial constitutes an important development in the conception of an architecture of remembrance. The memorial embodies some of the ideas that changed the perception of what a monument should look like. The VVM invites participation on several levels and manages to remain in a contemplative and emotional realm, demonstrated by its ongoing acceptance and popularity. The memorial’s unobtrusive horizontality is also contradictory to its physical setting: the National Mall in Washington, DC. Similarly to the ‘counter-monument’ (Gegen-Denkmal) generation of artists, Lin claimed that she designs memorials and anti-monuments.Footnote 31
In collective memory studies there is a tendency to see memorial spatial expressions primarily as characterized by the ‘primacy of the visual’.Footnote 32 And so art historian Daniel Sherman writes that ‘sight is the only sense powerful enough to bridge the gap between those who hold a memory rooted in bodily experience and those who, lacking such “experience,” nonetheless seek to share the memory.’Footnote 33 For the purposes of this study, the visual is the axes in the definition of a monument as an architectural or sculptural composition, or a combination thereof, dedicated to a person, event or particular act. A monument is intended primarily as a visual marker and a symbolic tool for communicating social and political ideas. This depiction relates to what has been understood as a ‘traditional’ sculptural monument. Accordingly, as a representation of its political, social and cultural context a memorial has a similar goal and designation, but it differs from a monument in several aspects. Different from a monument, a memorial is an architectural construct that is defined by its employment of space as an architectural tool. A memorial’s symbolic function is not necessarily apparent and often requires visitors’ engagement to be discovered. In other words, instead of only creating a representation of what is being commemorated, a memorial is a custom-designed experiential space in reference to its topic. In this way, a memorial space is inevitably engaging visitors on several levels, not only on the level of visual perception.
When engaged with the memorial, a visitor is exposed to its designed mnemonic power, participating as audience and performer at the same time. Furthermore, a memorial addresses the facilitation of mourning instead of only representing loss. A useful definition of public memorials is the one used in the field of transitional justice by which public memorials are ‘designed to evoke a specific reaction or set of reactions, including public acknowledgment of the event or people represented; personal reflection or mourning; pride, anger, or sadness about something that has happened; or learning or curiosity about periods in the past’.Footnote 34 Although this definition is concerned only with the representation of past events, a contemporary memorial is usually involved with present events or, rather, the existence of the past in the present, and in some cases memorials deal with ongoing but also anticipated future events.Footnote 35
Scope and Boundaries
Technically, this book is focused on architecture as a space for remembering and is therefore concerned with the memorial genre as a designing process that aims to understand and respond to social currencies. The main questions I ask are concerned with the purpose of creating a memorial in a given location, its translation into an architectural concept and its materialization. To see how memorial form originated and evolved I focus on the following key points: how architectural space supports memory and commemoration, what innovative design solutions are proposed in the face of social and political challenges, and how are these solutions implemented. To a limited extent, the investigation explores what the impact of the design is once the memorial is installed in real time and space.Footnote 36 In-depth research on the effects that discussed memorials have on their visitors and built environment will require research of its own. Before addressing these questions, I seek to situate memorialization in a wider context to be able to observe it more critically, and attend to several points which are relevant to the process of creating a memorial.
In an approach that explores different disciplines (namely history, psychology, anthropology and sociology), the aim is to establish a relevant framework for analysing contemporary projects. This framework constitutes the base for the analysis of the case studies that we will discuss. By focusing on contemporary memorial architecture in Europe and a few examples from the United States, I aim to take a closer look into processes of designing memorials today and how these translate memories and experiences of human loss into an architectural space. Memorials were selected to complement each other and to give a diverse range of practices in commemorative topics dedicated to war and contemporary violence. With the selection of projects gathered in this book I do not want to claim to make representative statements that apply for all Europe. Instead the discussion tries to offer a larger perspective on how spaces of memory are perceived from a viewpoint of a designer who, in the end, solidifies calls for remembrance. Without attempting to make bold statements about how these memorial spaces influence their specific contexts and thereby, arguably, collective consciousness about events commemorated, my goal is to take a closer look into conceptual and aesthetic characteristics of contemporary memorials to try to discern current day perceptions in the production of public memorial spaces dedicated to wars and contemporary violence. The impact memorials of our internet-based time have on the collectives will most likely start to be understood in the future, since we are only now beginning to realize the effects on how media from the beginning of the century influenced processes of collective remembrance.
Before going any further, I need to address the historical literature on the politics of memory – a field that is huge, and growing daily. Much of it focuses on three sets of problems:
(1) How do those in power orchestrate projects focusing on remembering the dead of the two world wars in uniform? Here the works of German historians – in particular Reinhart Koselleck and George Mosse take pride of place.Footnote 37
(2) How, if at all, has remembering the Holocaust transformed patterns of remembrance of the Second World War? Here state projects and those arising from within civil society are significant. In this domain, many historians from different Western countries have made foundational contributions. Among them are Deborah Lipstadt,Footnote 38 Saul Friedländer,Footnote 39 Peter Novick,Footnote 40 Aleida Assmann,Footnote 41 Jeffrey Alexander,Footnote 42 Omer Bartov,Footnote 43 Alon Confino,Footnote 44 Charles Maier,Footnote 45 Dominick LaCapra,Footnote 46 Kerwin Klein,Footnote 47 Dan Diner,Footnote 48 Henry Rousso,Footnote 49 Annette WieviorkaFootnote 50 and Jay Winter.Footnote 51 They write from different theoretical standpoints, but in different ways all wrestle with the problem of identifying and exploring the implications of an epistemological break between before and after the Holocaust.
(3) How did the ossification and collapse of the Soviet empire affect patterns of remembrance in what Timothy Snyder has called the ‘Bloodlands’ of Eastern Europe and Russia, where the majority of the victims of both Hitler and Stalin lost their lives?Footnote 52
This study cannot possibly interpolate the profound insights of all these scholars, but it engages in a dialogue about these three questions, and takes the view that while states try to orchestrate commemoration, they rarely succeed on their own in setting a society’s commemorative agenda. In addition, from the late 1970s, remembering the Holocaust has entered into the public history of the Second World War, and necessarily architects and designers have joined others in braiding together war and genocide. This is not the case everywhere, especially in Eastern Europe, but the public disagreements over how to remember the Second World War in, say, Poland or Hungary return time and again to the Holocaust. It is on the commemorative agenda, even when it is minimized or marginalized.
This study starts with the assumption that while politics on the local, national and transnational level is ever-present in commemorative projects, so is the question of the organization of space and the visualization of memory. What an architect can offer modestly is a spatial counterpoint, a sight and senses-driven approach to the question as to how do monuments and memorials emerge in space and time? This always involves material issues of funding as well as the inevitable tendency of those who have survived violence to claim privileged knowledge not only about their experiences but also about how to represent them to posterity.
In a sense, for a designer to enter this domain is to move into a minefield. And yet designers have a viewpoint which has not been central to much of the vast literature cited above. Some historians, in particular Reinhart Koselleck and James E. Young, have a deep sense of what Young has termed the texture of memory. This book follows their lead by serving as a commentary and an examination of the ways artists and architects have designed the texture of a number of important commemorative projects over the past century. It has been, of necessity, selective, but it is my hope that the book will add a relevant and until now neglected viewpoint to the vital and vibrant debate about commemoration of the victims of violence in today’s world.
Having dealt with violence and representing violence throughout most of my life and career, I am well aware that to focus on visual forms of remembrance is to invite a descent into the nightmares of our times. I see engagement with this task not as a matter of choice, but as a moral obligation. Each of us - architects included - brings to that task what we can.
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To address these questions, I carefully consider both theoretical approaches and how mourning and memorial practices unfolded over time. I undertook fieldwork to study many projects in situ. Accordingly, the structure of this book is divided into two parts. The first and largest part of this book is dedicated to addressing several issues such as the notion of memory and the process of mourning, funeral architecture, the limits of architectural representation, and a historical overview of significant architectural developments following the First World War up until the present day. In an interdisciplinary approach that takes cues from psychology, philosophy, anthropology, political and social history, together with art and architectural history, the purpose of this part is to establish a framework in which contemporary examples can be analysed. The second part, chapters three, four and five, is focused on a detailed analysis of contemporary memorial projects commemorating wars and more recent atrocities, including their design, construction and performance.
The first chapter presents a brief historical overview of significant architectural developments with regards to memorial projects, as shaped by different political climates. The overview is primarily concerned with architectural projects and concepts in Western Europe. There are a few examples from the United States and fewer still from Eastern Europe, as well as countries from other continents. My aim is to show the development of commemorative architecture in Europe and in the United States at a time when transcultural exchanges of information have been frequent and fruitful. I also discuss examples from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union where architects and designers have historically been seen as more resistant to ‘Western’ influences and are more directly the product of state policies. Certainly, there are many stories to be told of commemoration in Southern Europe, in Scandinavia, in Asia Minor, but the mountain of material available on Western Europe, Central Europe, and the United States is daunting enough to climb. I recognize that more needs to be done, and hope I have shown some ways in which a more complete history of the architecture of commemoration in the twentieth century and after can be written.
The first chapter follows the development of commemorative architecture after each of the world wars – the interwar period and the late 1940s and 1950s – as well as the upsurge in commemorative efforts during the 1960s and after 1980. Throughout, the politics of memory is the resultant of many different vectors, but among them is the shifting perspectives of artists and architects on the legacies of the two world wars and in particular on the legacy of the Holocaust. Others matter, but this book focuses on the group of architects and designers, men and women, who have sketched out and realized commemorative projects.
The second chapter, ‘The Dual Role of Memorial Architecture’, is focused on the intricate relationship between architecture and representations concerning death, psychological aspects of mourning, particularly mourning related to the experience of trauma, and the facilitation of its ritual. By trauma, I follow the general usage that the experience of mass death in the twentieth century shattered the sense of self of many survivors and made it difficult, and at times impossible, for them to resume their ante bellum lives.
Other issues relevant to the contemporary context and the production of memorial spaces are also tackled here, namely the private and public role of memorial architecture and the possibilities of architecture as a form of agency in remembering and dealing with a difficult past. The overarching question in the creation of a memorial space is how the design can add meaning to the memory-work that naturally involves many participants, with a variety of expectations and demands. Moreover, memorials can possibly provide a significant locus to future generations for processing the legacies of trauma, since studies have shown that an attuned physical environment is beneficial to psycho-emotional health.Footnote 53 Various proposals and designs for both memorial and funerary architecture by different architects in different historical periods are observed. In this framework, attention is also given to cemeteries as commemorative landscapes containing features relevant for memorial architecture, such as transitional spaces. Since funerary architecture strongly influenced the evolution of the architectural memorial, this chapter will trace how the topic of death inspired some of the most influential designers of monuments and memorials in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
In the third chapter, I examine several memorials dedicated to the victims of contemporary terrorist attacks. These include the 11-M memorial in Madrid, the 9/11 memorial in New York, the July 22 memorial in Utøya, and the recently dedicated European memorial to victims of a war incident – the MH17 memorial in Haarlemmermeer municipality in the Netherlands. The Madrid memorial, now over a decade old, is analysed in depth with the intention to create a framework through which to observe current efforts in designing memorials that have a similar purpose. By looking at the process of creating the 11-M memorial and whether and how it has fulfilled its purpose during the last decade, a reference point is introduced for contemporary developments that still need to perform in practice and create the much-needed time distance to observe them critically.
The fourth chapter is a comparative analysis of two Holocaust memorial museums: the Kazerne Dossin in Mechelen, Belgium and the Cité de la Muette in Drancy, France. In these two case studies, architects were faced with a similar task, namely to design new museums adjacent to or on sites that were used as internment transit camps during the Second World War. Several scholars have argued that the commemoration of the Holocaust has set the precedent for memorials dealing with violence in recent decades.Footnote 54 Memorial museums as a relatively young form of commemoration emerged from the predicament of finding ways to commemorate the Holocaust in physical spaces associated with genocide. As museums are becoming more popular and technologically advanced, it is inviting to understand how these projects address the task of dealing with Holocaust sites in their spatial, material and operational logic, and how these projects set agendas for other forms of commemorative architecture dealing with other crimes and other victims.
The fifth chapter examines two projects dedicated to the centenary of the First World War: the ‘Ring of Memory’ at Notre Dame de Lorette near Arras in northern France and the project entitled ‘Remembrance Park 14–18’ in Flemish Belgium. The centenary has so far produced numerous commemorative activities and architectural projects across Europe. The two projects analysed here are inviting as examples of different design efforts undertaken during the centenary of the war. The chapter will look closely at the architectural, spatial and semantic qualities of the two projects to gain a better understanding of their significance in the societal and political environment of the twenty-first century in Western Europe.
In these later chapters, the discussion focuses less on theoretical and formal descriptions and more on problems of practice. Hence, architecture’s emphasis on operating time and space as a medium of communication with visitors is the primary focus of the analysis of case studies. The architectural examples were selected based on the following questions: who is the commissioner and what is the context? What were the demands and expectations of the commissioners? What was the design solution to a particular problem and how did the design process develop? How does the realized building operate in practice and how does it affect the visitor?
The scope of this book is wide. But its remit is neither to be a summary of memorial architecture nor to develop a singular optic for understanding all contemporary memorials. Rather, the aim is to distinguish a set of issues, demonstrated by means of case studies, which are commonly addressed by commissioners and designers of contemporary memorials and, in this way, provide a framework for future projects. I argue that this way of approaching the topic can contribute to a better understanding of the design process and can increase the options that can be applied in practice. My aim is both to understand the history of the dialectical relationship between people and spaces of memory, and to add to it in the hope of recognizing meaningful ways to commemorate victims of war and violence.
