Arch 1710 Architecture and MemorySpring 2009

Memorials and monuments: places of memory in the modern nation-stateFebruary 3, 2009

Architecture: art of remembering or forgetting?

questions of authorship, agency, creativityin 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 AvenueFrom Private to Public and back

Dwelling Vernacular architectureof Philadelphia Row Houses

Porch Life and socialization

Semi-public spacewith the construction ofplatform of activism

Performance

Fortification andthe arming of the MOVE

Making of a Bunker/Shelter

Standoff with Philadelphia PoliceBombing/Destruction

Reconstruction with porch life and possibilitiesof social life avoided/banned

Continued Occupation of 6221 Osage Aveby police

the idea of the contemporary monument: product of modernity?

Lenin's Mausoleumin Red Square, Moscow

Philadelphia VietnamVeterans 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 ReiglThe first Conservator General of monumentsin the Austro-Hungarian Empire

He wrote:“Monuments in the sense of this law are...works of the human hand since whose inceptionat 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

Ringstraße

"la forme d'une ville Change plus vite, hélas! que le coeur d'un mortel“

Baudelaire

Baron Hausmann and his Boulevards, Paris (Project 1852-1870)

Historical value and architectural conservationReigl’s intentional and unintentional monuments

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin (2003-2005) Peter Eisenman

Jochen Gerz,Monument against fascismOctober 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 MemorialKeystone, 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.

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,

Recycling Lenin

Modern architecture died in St Louis, Missourion 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 progressiveideals of CIAM (Congress of International Modern Architects) and had won a design award from the American Institute of Architectsin 1951.

Spontaneous memorial