Arch 1710 Architecture and Memory
Spring 2009
Memorials and monuments: places of memory in the modern nation-state
February 3, 2009
Architecture: art of remembering or forgetting?
questions of authorship, agency, creativity
in the production and deconstruction of space
MOVE: Police bombing
of a West Philadelphia
neighborhood,
May 13, 1985
unresolved memories, open wound,
vulnerable to oblivion
6221 Osage Avenue
From Private to Public and back
Dwelling
Vernacular architecture
of Philadelphia Row Houses
Semi-public space
with the construction of
platform of activism
Porch Life and socialization
Performance
Reconstruction
with porch life and possibilities
of social life avoided/banned
Continued Occupation
of 6221 Osage Ave
by police
Fortification and
the arming of the MOVE
Making of a Bunker/Shelter
Standoff with Philadelphia
Police
Bombing/Destruction
the idea of the contemporary monument: product of modernity?
Lenin's Mausoleum
in Red Square, Moscow
Philadelphia Vietnam
Veterans Memorial
monument, n.
A statue, building, or other structure erected to commemorate a famous or notable person or event. Something that by its survival commemorates and
distinguishes a person, action, period, event, etc.; something that serves as a memorial.
[< classical Latin monumentum, monimentum commemorative statue or building, tomb, reminder, written record, literary work <
From: monere to remind +
Compare Anglo-Norman monument tomb, Old French, Middle French, French monument (end of the 10th cent. in sense ‘tomb’, also in Old French as
moniment; late 14th cent. in general sense ‘anything that preserves a memory of something’, 17th cent. in sense ‘lasting work of literature, science or
art’, 18th cent. denoting edifices which are imposing by virtue of their grandeur or antiquity), Spanish monumento (1207), Portuguese monumento
(a1284), Italian monumento (1292).
With sense 1, compare Welsh mynwent (< classical Latin monumentum) graveyard. With the phrase monuments of letters (see sense 3b), compare
classical Latin monumenta litterarum. With sense 4d, compare earlier use of French monument of a work of literature (see above), and also use of
classical Latin monumentum in Horace Odes 3.30.1, where the poet compares his literary work to a bronze monument.]
Oxford English Dictionary
Alois Reigl
The first Conservator General of monuments
in the Austro-Hungarian Empire
He wrote:
“Monuments in the sense of this law are...
works of the human hand since whose inception
at least sixty years have passed.” (1903)
Revolutions of 1848 across Europe
Chartist meeting on Kennington Common in 1848.
Modernity and the urban space Ringstraße in Vienna, in 1872
Ringstrasse and the Parliament
"la forme d'une ville
Change plus vite, hélas! que le coeur d'un mortel“
Baudelaire
Ringstraße
Baron Hausmann and his Boulevards,
Paris (Project 1852-1870)
Historical value and architectural conservation
Reigl’s intentional and unintentional monuments
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin (2003-2005)
Peter Eisenman
Jochen Gerz,
Monument against fascism
October 10, 1986-November 10, 1993
Column of galvanized steel with a lead coating,
1200 x 100 x 100 cm, weight ca. 7 t., underground
shaft with viewing window, depth 14 m,
concrete footing, 2 steel styluses
for signing the surface, text panel.
Site: Hamburg-Harburg,
Harburger Ring at the corner of Hölertwiete/Sand,
Harburg-Rathaus S-line train station.
Nation state and its monuments Ataturk’s mausoleum in Ankara- Anitkabir (1953)
Reliefs from Anitkabir: Narration of a modernist utopia
VIDEO: Performing the State
Military ceremony at Ataturk's Mausoleum in Ankara.
The Swords of Qādisīyah, also called the Hands of Victory,
Baghdad (1989)
In February 2007, it was reported that the new Iraqi government had organized the Committee for Removing Symbols of the Saddam Era
and that the Hands of Victory monument had begun to be dismantled. The demolition of the Hands of Victory began on Tuesday, February
20th, 2007. At that time, 10-foot chunks had been cut out of the bronze monument. Numerous Iraqi bystanders and coalition troops were
seen taking Iranian helmets and bits of the monument away as souvenirs. The decision to remove the monument, made by Prime Minister
Nouri al-Maliki, was challenged by U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who blocked the demolition on February 21st. As of February 24th
the demolition has been postponed.
Wikipedia
Monument as site-specific art: Mount Rushmore National Memorial
Keystone, South Dakota (1927-1941)
Originally known to the Lakota Sioux as Six Grandfathers, the mountain was renamed after Charles E. Rushmore, a prominent New York lawyer, during an
expedition in 1885. The site was seized from the Lakota tribe after the Great Sioux War of 1876-77.
Recycling Lenin
As the Soviet Empire fractured,
symbols of the Party were dismantled.
Huge statues of Lenin and Stalin were toppled,
alternately grieved or abused by onlookers,
then trucked away to be abandoned in fields
or other remote spots,
Modern architecture died in St Louis, Missouri
on July 15, 1972 at 3:32 pm.
Pruitt-Igoe urban housing project
demolished at the request of its inhabitants...
Pruitt-Igoe was constructed according to the most progressive
ideals of CIAM (Congress of International Modern Architects) and
had won a design award from the American Institute of Architects
in 1951.
Spontaneous memorial