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Home , Charles Sargeant Jagger, Lawrence Halprin, Royal Artillery Memorial

MEMENTO MORE

by Andrew M. Shanken

Putting the New Wave of Memorials Into Context

Figures 1 & 2 (left): Vietnam Veterans Memorial, , D.C., 1983. Top, ; bottom, Frederick Hart. Figure 3 (right): Krieger-Denkmal, Hamburg, Germany, 19th century.

I. MEMORIAL MANIA SINCE MAYA LIN kinds of issues in a rapidly changing memorials lags behind our ability to pro- The is in the throes of a political atmosphere, amid shifting con- duce them. And yet, in a mass society, memorial mania that manifests itself in ventions of art and architecture. in which almost all aspects of culture two ways. First, memorials culminate This was not always the case. Until from birth to death have been farmed every conflict, act, notable death, or his- , the dominance of the clas- out to impersonal institutions, memorials torical moment. They have become the sical tradition in architecture and the are conspicuous for remaining individ- morbid cigarette we consume after figure in provided a set of ual and personal. As cultural behavior, tragedy, as if every loss remains some- conventions for memorials and their they continue to resist capitulation to Photo: Stephen Tobriner/ courtesy AVRL how incomplete without its permanent spaces with almost limitless possibilities the machine, and this is because each place in the public sphere, in spite of the for composition within a limited frame- one represents what has been called fact that the nature of the public work of commemoration. Days of “memorial work,” the collective process becomes increasingly ambiguous. remembrance necessitated a place to of mourning that a community engages Second, memorials have succumbed to gather. The memorial provided a focus in after a traumatic event. the forces of multiculturalism and politi- for attention for official ceremonies, as Maya Lin’s Vietnam War Memorial cal correctness, and like the pluralistic— well as a site for the laying of wreaths in Washington, D.C. (1982) is a touch- some would say balkanized—society they or flowers, the inscription of names, and stone for many of these issues (fig. 1). represent, they have become cauliflow- an allegorical representation of the The story is well known. Lin won a ers, each one reflecting the messy aggre- event, such as peace, victory, or noble national competition for the memorial as gation of interests of democracy traffick- death in the case of a war memorial a student at Yale University. Her mini- ing in official remembrance. Recent (fig. 3). Since the American and French malist black granite wall, cut into a events, moreover, have strained memorial revolutions, these sorts of memorials grassy swell on the Washington Mall, Photo: Raymond Lifchez/ courtesy AVRL traditions in new ways, from the have proliferated in step with the geo- used the simplest means—reflection AIDS/HIV epidemic to the bombing of the metric population growth of the modern and the silent rhythm of names cata- Federal Building in Oklahoma City, the world, in part because modernity ruth- logued by date of death—as an abstract events of September 11, 2001, and the lessly mechanized the means of means to create a sacred yet incom- succession of anniversaries of 20th-cen- destruction. To put this in Malthusian plete narrative of the Vietnam War. tury events, including the Holocaust and terms, memorials quickly exceeded the Although walls of names and granite World War II. In short, American attempts growth of means of subsistence: our are longstanding memorial strategies, to memorialize are encountering new ability to nurture memory and care for Lin’s spare memorial departed radically

MEMORIALS 3 Figure 4 (opposite, left): The Memorial, , England. Derwent Wood, 1925. Figure 5 (opposite, right): Royal Memorial, London, England. , 1921-25.

Figure 6 (left): Iwo Jima Memorial, Washington, D.C. Felix DeWeldon, 1954.

from memorial conventions and set a lists of names to pre-existing memorials. American History. Since World War I, an act of heroism that likens David’s photographic origins insinuated, public obelisks, and columns surrounded with pattern for later efforts. While Lin It is in the context of the additive memo- critics of figurative memorials have sling to the new technology of the relations reinforced. Giant plaster mod- soldiers or topped with idealized figures single-handedly brought memorials up rial that Lin’s memorial gains even understood the dilemma of representing machine gun—the new weapon must els of the memorial went on tour during like Victory or Liberty. Few memorials in to date with developments in art, her greater meaning, since the way it modern warfare. “What will they do?” have seemed like an unlikely image for the war as part of a bond drive, making the decades after World War II relied on memorial instantly incited controversy. amasses names and its exquisite one writer asked, “Make statues of a memorial. The cameos in Times Square and on Wall the conventions of high art. Think of Shortly after the memorial was complet- restraint echo this important yet over- guys in jeeps?”1 Memorial is much more self-conscious- Street in , and in Cleveland, what a Jackson Pollock or Andy Warhol ed, disgruntled Veterans and others looked tradition in memorialization. In fact, this is exactly what some ly modern. Not only does it nod to traffic Detroit, and Indianapolis.3 This memorial memorial might look like, and you see pushed for a more figurative memorial, artists attempted after World War I. with its scale and directionality, it also circus, based in photojournalism, under- the problem. It is no coincidence that in part because they saw Lin’s design as II. MEMORIAL TRADITIONS While the Great War spawned its share depicts modern war realistically. mined the idealizations and allegorical the Vietnam War spurred the first a negative commentary on the war. Hart’s figures, by turn, interject a com- of classical victory columns and allegor- Bronzes of men in the uniforms of the potential of the traditional memorial. All Minimalist memorial. While Minimalism In response, Frederick Hart was mentary on the abstraction and restraint ical figures, it also generated two other day stand guard over the “tomb” and its memorials are forms of media and already had a pedigree by the early commissioned to design a more tradi- of Lin’s memorial, a critique with roots in streams that continue with us today: life-size Howitzer gun. While our eyes modes of propaganda, but Iwo Jima may 1980s, Lin was the first to apply it willful- tional memorial, which was completed the beginnings of modern memorializa- abstraction and realism. The expression- may find the be the first to be a thoroughgoing media ly to memorials, and it was a stunning in 1993 (fig. 2). Three soldiers, each pre- tion. In art-historical terms, they also istic twisting of ’s powerful, it was much criticized in its creation, one powerful enough to resist act completely in tune with the tenor of dictably of a different ethnic group, gaze may be seen as a sign of the passing of Monument to the March Dead of 1921 day for its realism. Americans wrestled the trends in art and society away from the moment. wistfully at the wall—three bronze an era of universally legible, unequivo- (destroyed by the Nazis and restored with similar issues after both World War figurative memorials. After World War II, ghosts mourning, and also instructing cal artistic traditions. Lin’s memorial after World War II) shows the first I and World War II. with the advent of television, the iconic III. MULTICULTURALISM, MULTIPLICITY, visitors how to mourn. As controlled and supplanted the purported universality of impulse at work, while two more con- The Iwo Jima Memorial (officially memorial was trapped in a mimetic rela- AND MEMORY open-ended as Lin’s design is, Hart’s fig- classicism, of figural narration or allego- ventional memorials at Hyde Park called the Marine Corps War Memorial, tionship with the media, each reciprocal- The Vietnam War, which the United urative group borders on the maudlin ry in art, offering up the new universality Corner, London, show the quandary over by Felix DeWeldon, 1954) is arguably the ly reinforcing or undermining the truth States memorialized before the earlier and sentimental. The soldiers recall of abstraction. Light, reflection, space, realism in memorials (figs. 4, 5). The only figurative memorial to achieve icon- claims of the other. World War II or Korean War, was per- 19th-century memorial practices, movement, and the rows of names that Machine Gun Corps Memorial (Derwent ic status in the United States between The decline of figurative art and haps the most contentious issue of its returning gently to what Philippe Ariés threaten to become infinite, these are Wood, 1925), also known as the Boy World War I and Lin’s memorial (fig. 6). the rise of abstraction—what we now day, a war fought amid social unrest has called the “ostentatious” mourning the raw triggers of pathos—operating David Memorial, and the Royal Artillery This memorial, based on a photograph can see as an out-of-body experience and protest: part of the same set of of that century. By contrast, the 20th above history, above culture, or so pro- Memorial (Charles Sargeant Jagger, taken on Mt. Suribachi on the island of that lasted a few decades after World forces that liberalized American society century has treated death as a taboo, ponents of abstraction would believe. 1921-25) both memorialize soldiers who Iwo Jima, where American soldiers War II—was played out through memo- and led to multiculturalism, but also part and memorials as public markers of They now compete with war-torn men in died in World War I, but they do so in raised a flag upon taking the mountain, rials as well. After World War II, so- of the Cold War. Minimalism arose in the death have become increasingly fatigues, whose realism is as much a remarkably different ways. The under- represented the war directly. The Iwo called living memorials carried the day. same years and gave a wide berth to restrained, leading to the most under- problem as Horatio Greenough’s bare- size David, a classical allegorical figure Jima Memorial overcomes the problems These “useful” memorials—community these multiple viewpoints. It is an art stated means of memorialization: the chested George Washington as an drawn from Michelangelo, offers an of the Royal Artillery Memorial precisely centers, gymnasiums, parks, and the that is assertive with space, not mean- additive plaque. As 20th-century wars enthroned Roman emperor (1833-36) on abstraction of society’s sacrifice of its by being “real,” by presenting itself as memorial highways on which we all ing; it sets a stage, but leaves it empty piled up, many towns simply added new display nearby in the Museum of youth to war, and a biblical reference to veristic, an act of war bronzed.2 What its drive—displaced the tradition of arches, for the spectator, who becomes an

4 FRAMEWORKS MEMORIALS 5 Figure 7 (left): Vietnam Women’s Memorial Project, Memorial, its Korean pendant (1995), memorials and that commemorative Washington, D.C. Olenna Goodacre, 1993. which quite literally mirrors Lin’s granite practices have made it a matter of utility Figures 8-9 (right, top): Korean War Veterans wall, came prepackaged as an aggre- to build new memorials in the same Memorial, Washington, D.C., 1995. gate affair, a compilation of wall, figura- space. Behind this utility, however, we Figure 10 (right, lower middle): Civil War Memorial, tive elements, a , and a vertical might see the long tradition of the Mystic Seaport, Conn. accent. In addition to names, garish, American cemetery, like ’s Figure 11 (right, bottom): Korean War Veterans poorly scaled faces are bitten into the Green-Wood Cemetery, which urban Memorial, New York, New York, 1991. stone, the embarrassingly bad likeness- dwellers in the 19th century used as a es appearing like shrunken heads next picturesque retreat from Manhattan. to the reflections of the visitors. The Leisure and cultural memory have often simple and direct sense of movement in been intertwined in the American land- Lin’s masterpiece is lost amid the bric- scape. In this respect Battery Park is a-brac. One of the criticisms of tradi- typical of many towns and cities. Here tional memorials in the 1940s was that sit memorials to the American Merchant they were cluttered and random. So Marines, Wireless Operators (1915), vehement were the opponents to “use- World War II, Korea (1991), and New actor. Its impatience with Abstract well as cultural difference. After all, by viewpoints is again typical of the era less” memorials, that calls went out for York City Police (1997), as well as a tem- Expressionism transcended a distrust of the 1980s even advertising had taken to that nurtured both liberal political cor- their destruction. The living memorial porary memorial and eternal flame for the artistic, the fussy, and the inner life what we can now identify as the United rectness and conservative family val- was intended, in part, to circumvent the September 11th and the Irish Hunger of the artist, to disengage with the rigid Colors of Benetton strategy (begun in ues. What becomes apparent in hind- problem. All of these problems have Memorial, all within the historical pall of encounter between the work of art on a 1982), the marketing of racial or ethnic sight is the shaping of a memorial returned with the Korean Memorial. the battery itself. It is New York’s wall and the adoring or bored viewer in variety. There were precedents: The Iwo precinct within the grand necropolis of Even the haunting, over-scaled soldiers mementopolis (fig. 11). These conditions a museum. Lin used minimalism to Jima Memorial also represented multi- D.C., a memorial “room” for Vietnam who walk tensely in a “field” by the implicate the single memorial in a com- restore some of the possibility of the ple ethnicities, but this reflected the within the American temenos. And wall—even they lose their gravitas, as plicated landscape of history, memory, cairn or burial mound, that most ancient actual soldiers who staked the flag atop democracy was not done serving up the signage tells us not to walk with them leisure, and tourism, whether the space memorial tradition that likens the Mount Suribachi. Frederick Hart’s memorial will of the people, for the sec- (to keep off the grass), which is the is designed to be complex, like the unfathomable forces and eons behind memorial, by contrast, is a fiction driven ond memorial was of three men mourn- very thing we ought to be doing (fig. 9). Korean War Memorial in D.C., or the appearance of an erratic boulder in by a political agenda, albeit an agenda ing the loss of mostly male combatants. As a whole, it is a one-man band of a becomes complex through aggregation, a landscape to a life and its loss. The we might very well agree with—while Women, too, had played an important memorial, playing almost every memori- like Battery Park. inconclusiveness of the Vietnam War ruing the trespass on Lin’s memorial. role in the war. Some 11,500 of them al convention loudly, but playing none and the upheaval associated with it The problem is that figuration returned served overseas. They, too, needed rep- of them well. IV. MEMORIAL LANDSCAPES demanded such a memorial vocabulary. in the 1980s in the form of a postmodern resentation on the Mall. As H. L. The retreat of the singular, iconic This multiplicity, however, can create a The multiculturalism born of the same critique, a suitable mode for comment- Mencken remarked, in a democracy, the memorial is not complete, but it has striking environment when applied at social forces would demand still a dif- ing on the Vietnam War, while Hart’s people get what they want, and they get declined in step with the growth of the right scale with a firm, consistent ferent one. sculpture is anything but ironic. This it good and hard. So it is with the memorial ghettoes. Every small town hand. Lawrence Halprin’s Franklin By the time Lin’s memorial was fin- nudges it towards kitsch. His soldiers Vietnam Women’s Memorial (1993), a gathers its herd of memorials on a public Delano Roosevelt Memorial in D.C. plays ished, multiculturalism was spreading also overlook Lin’s memorial from the sentimental handmaiden’s tale of a square or park, near a courthourse, or at this game, but within a compelling from the rarefied academy to the vitiat- best perch for photographs, stitching memorial whose peripheral site on a remaindered piece of grass at an and coherent landscape (fig. 12). ed air of popular culture—and figuration the piece into rituals of tourism and the expresses a marginal role for women in interchange now dominated by traffic Monumental walls of cyclopean boul- had returned in art. Hart’s group is prob- heritage industry. Vietnam (fig. 7). It is so clearly addenda, (fig. 10). Even in the nation’s densest ders shelter a combination of waterfalls, ably the first evidence of multicultural- Washington thus had two Vietnam a perverse disservice to the very point urban environment, New York City, freestanding (including one ism, that well-intentioned but ultimately memorials, the first a major advance in of multicultural sensitivity. One wonders Battery Park has been given over to a of FDR in a wheelchair and another of bloated bundle of moralistic restrictions, solving the dilemma of figuration in why their names couldn’t be added to growing collection of memorials, him with his dog, Fala), famous quota- making its way into a memorial. The eth- memorials, achieving something iconic the wall, regardless of gender or race. anchored by the old fort, which casts its tions, and fields of more abstract sculp- nic variety of his soldiers was assumed, without using icons; and the second, a Yet the story continues, not with historical aura over the entire park. Here tural elements, all within a linear frame- an insipid attempt to bronze multicultur- knee-jerk retrenchment and an exercise Vietnam, but with the effort to memorial- a number of unrelated memorials have work of outdoor “rooms” that chrono- alism, a matter that demands a deeper in conventionality. This face-off of con- ize the Korean War (fig. 8). As if to fore- been asked to talk to one another, the logically traces his four terms as presi- rethinking of the memorial tradition as flicting artistic traditions and of cultural stall the conflicts of the Vietnam War only unifying theme being that they are dent. The effect is so grand that one

6 FRAMEWORKS MEMORIALS 7 Figure 12 (left): Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, practices have asserted themselves. space, turning the voids into recessed ground by a passageway and a small Washington, D.C. Office of Lawrence Halprin, 1997. Photo: Lawrence Halprin. The question we need to ask is about pools, with cascades of water defining space where visitors can light memorial the shape of memorials in the post-Cold the edges of the former buildings. A candles or gather in small groups. War world, when changes in American grove of deciduous trees intensifies the Additionally, the designers have society and globalization are deforming towers’ absence, and their transforma- exposed the slurry wall, the massive memorial practices. tion throughout the year as leaves fall foundations of the original buildings. and buds emerge plays with traditional Some of the artifacts and wreckage V. MEMORIALS AFTER SEPTEMBER 11TH memorial ideas of birth and death. The from the disaster will be placed in an All of this, naturally, anticipates the architects explained these pools as a interpretive center, making these palpa- debates over the World Trade Center sensual, unfolding experience. As visi- ble parts of the memorial experience. In Memorial, which inherits these experi- tors descend on the ramps that lead into contrast to this public place, a large ments and expectations. It is burdened the memorial spaces, they are stone vessel in a separate room will by the spatial complications of the trend “removed from the sights and sounds of contain the remains of unidentified vic- toward aggregative memorials and by the city and immersed in a cool dark- tims. As a whole, the memorial deli- the latest fashions in art, including ness. As they proceed, the sound of cately balances an immensely compli- installations and the advance of digital water falling grows louder, and more cated set of demands, including a vari- wonders if even Roosevelt can sustain woven a composition of landscape ele- essay reverse the problem that modern and high tech art. Moreover, the multi- daylight filters in to below. At the bottom ety of factions with different ideas, a this scale. Moreover, the collision of the ments (stone, water, and trees) along a designers have with the singular, iconic cultural dilemma in memorialization still of their descent, they find themselves national tragedy with a strong local monumental spaces with the less con- forceful, curving berm faced in stone memorial—namely that its gravitational has not been solved theoretically, pro- behind a thin curtain of water, staring component, the need to mediate vincing smaller sculptures leads unsur- and engraved with famous quotes from pull leaves little room for a diversity of grammatically or formally. out at an enormous pool.” The chamber between consumerist and memorial prisingly to a feeling of bathos. The King. Atop the berm runs a tree-lined experience or commemorative prac- Multiculturalism may in fact never be again acts conventionally, bearing the environments, and the need for a monu- strategy might work better with a major path marked with intimate niches that tice? Does the new sprawling memorial solved with art, and perhaps it should names of the dead on its walls. Here mental space amidst skyscrapers that national event, even if we take FDR as serve as “wellsprings” recounting the landscape resist potent commemoration not be. From the beginning, the convention is not a failure of nerve, but can allow for intimate and personal the personification of the American contribution of “martyrs” to the Civil because it fails to define memory and impromptu memorials set up around the an attempt to communicate pathos encounters with objects. The design experience in depression and war. Yet Rights Movement. Elsewhere monoliths place in terms of commemorative prac- World Trade Center site revealed the through well-worn memorial strategies. manages to massage all of these ele- Halprin, as landscape architect, had the frame views of the Jefferson and Lincoln tice? If we disperse memorial spaces, splintering commemorative agenda, In Arad and Walker’s words: “Standing ments together without overdetermin- sensitivity to massage all of these ele- Memorials, linking MLK with an axis of then how do we distinguish between with memorials to policemen, fire fight- there at the water’s edge, looking at a ing the experience. This leaves open ments into a single, lucid experience. “larger democratic ideals that form the the sacred and the profane, between ers, office workers, and a host of other pool of water that is flowing away into the possibility, as with Lin’s Vietnam Unlike the Korean Memorial, which is context for King’s words and deeds.” landscapes of play and landscapes of groups and individuals (fig. 13). These an abyss, a visitor to the site can sense War Memorial, of a critical response to less than the sum of its pieces, the FDR Another monolith carved with a likeness memory? And is this slippage signifi- factions would play an important role in that what is beyond this curtain of water the site and the event. It does not, how- Memorial is expansive and whole. of King serves as a monumental coun- cant? We might aim instead to shape directing the process and ultimately the and ribbon of names is inaccessible.” ever, explicitly accommodate the vari- A similar idea lies behind ROMA terpoint to the Jefferson Memorial, a our memorials in terms of commemora- final shape of the memorial, including The two chambers are linked under- ous groups who have demanded repre- Design Group’s Martin Luther King, Jr. much-needed anchor for the space. tive practices rather than through land- the insistence on retaining the footprints Memorial (see pp. 12-15), planned for Time will tell if this strategy leads to scape and artistic practices. The stiff of the old buildings. This alone consti- D.C. and conceived as “an engaging effective and moving commemoration. old Civil War memorials or the dough- tutes a stunning influence of public sen- landscape experience tied to other land- The larger trend expressed in boys erected after World War I may timent over the design process, even if Figure 13 (left): Impromptu memorial at Ground Zero scapes and monuments, not as a single Halprin’s FDR Memorial and ROMA have asserted a single master narrative. after September 11th, 2001. Photo by Andrew a design competition determined the Shanken. object or memorial dominating the site.” Design Group’s MLK Memorial might They might even be said to glorify war ultimate form. The idea reacts against the monumental, give us pause: These are environments uncritically. But at least they provided Michael Arad and Peter Walker’s iconic memorial tradition, not through whose massive scale and complexity an uncomplicated anchor in public winning design, “Reflecting Absence,” restraint, as Maya Lin had done, but are new developments. Naturally the space where a community could meet takes its cue from the voids left by the rather through complexity and immer- problem begins with the program, not to perform its annual rituals on destruction of the towers (see pp. 16- sion in a landscape. It is also quite dif- with the architects. Nonetheless, as Memorial Day and Veterans Day. These 21). In fact, these are not voids in the lit- ferent from the anti-memorials popular- memorial landscapes, they immodestly rites may now contend with barbecues eral sense, since the entire site was a ized in Germany in recent decades, annex landscape in general, threatening and sporting events, offering a conven- smoldering pit for months; rather, the although it does operate as a critique of to make all public space memorial ient day off from work rather than true voids correspond with our “mental traditional memorials. Eschewing a “sin- space. In other words, does the memori- days of commemoration, but they have map” of the lost buildings. Arad and gle message,” ROMA Design Group has al fetish noted at the opening of this not waned entirely, and other memorial Walker imaginatively shaped a memorial

8 FRAMEWORKS MEMORIALS 9

sentation at the site, and as a national Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, a seem- , renounced prescriptive memorial to the event, it should not be ingly infinite field of stone megaliths in a symbolism for a more direct, emotive so encumbered. These groups will find plaza whose scale and maze-like quali- appeal through a landscape installation Figure 14 (right): National AIDS Memorial Grove their memorial places. ties suggest the ineffable while obstruct- that operates actively through multisen- competition. Raveevarn Choksombatchai, Jacob ing, occluding, and resisting the visitor’s sorial engagement. She likened the Atherton, Michael Eggers, Andrew Shanken, 2005. VI. EMERGING FORMS view. In the AIDS Memorial competion, experience of the memorial to the sen- In 2004, the Board of Directors of the the winning design, chosen from more sation of turbulence in an airplane, National AIDS Memorial Grove held a than 200 entries, added heavy symbolism when an otherwise smooth flight hits an competition for the design of a National to the idea of a field. Janette Kim and air pocket and suddenly jolts us back AIDS Memorial. The brief challenged Chloe Town, who incorrectly appropriat- into the reality that we’re perilously competitors to think in terms of the ed the term “Living Memorial” for their hurtling through the air at 500 miles per whole seven-acre site nestled in a dell title, proposed an area blackened as if hour, 30,000 feet above the ground. With in ’s Golden Gate Park. by ritual burn—“as if” because an actual time people have been lulled into apathy The open-ended invitation to use the fire in arid, windy, fire-wary San about AIDS. This project aimed to dell, which already sustains a variety Francisco would be out of the question. reawaken the fact of its immanent found in memorial markers to AIDS, The symbolism, at first dark and frighten- threat. Its resistance to specific mean- suggested the sort of memorial land- ing, is meant to evoke hope, since out of ing, however, elaborated on the trend that took place in the cabin of an air- The intense scrutiny of the present will orphaned on odd patches of public land. scape of the FDR and MLK memorials. the charred remains of a simulated for- toward open-ended narratives in memo- plane into a contemplative experience of fade with the years. Time will render The cynical response to all of this is to But the subject of the memorial, the est fire new life would emerge. Were the rials, and it did so with political inten- verdant farmland. A generation ago, the meaningless even the most contentious conclude that no matter what design we AIDS epidemic, offered a range of new design attached to real ritual burning, tions. Memorials tend to name and num- urge would have been to monumentalize memorials: Imagine a future moment choose in our memorials, they reflect issues. Not only would the project one could imagine an immensely evoca- ber; their quantitative certainty bounds the site of the crash with a ruined air- when a child asks a parent to explain a currents in art and architecture, and, as memorialize those lost to the disease, tive memorial, one tied to annual com- them. Choksambatchai’s memorial, by plane, a plaque, or a sculptural element wall of names on granite and the parent forms of social commentary, they but also, the board hoped, the design memorations and to the natural cycle of contrast, rejected the act of quantifica- that marked the spot. But here the does not know it is the Vietnam become outdated within a generation or would stimulate thinking about AIDS and death and rebirth. This would match the tion as inadequate to the memorial work memorial landscape makes sense; it Memorial. Rome memorialized with two. In effect, most memorials are built memory, promote hope for those unresolved nature of the AIDS epidemic, demanded by the AIDS epidemic. uses the land to explain the event, and it such vigor that precincts became over- not for posterity or for longevity but as touched by the disease, increase aware- and it would do so viscerally. But since Instead she proposed a rich environ- does so in the service of a memorial crowded with memorials, forcing the part of the mourning process. They con- ness of AIDS as a global tragedy, edu- the idea must be reduced to a static, ment demanding that visitors question experience. The form of the memorial, in city to periodically sweep them away, stitute an essential part of people in the cate the public, raise awareness about sculptural suggestion of this process, their reality and their relationship to the other words, derives from its commemo- making room for the next round. We’ve present working through loss. Their the Grove, enhance its beauty, and much of the dynamism and interactive disease and its ramifications, while pre- rative function. In some sense, the all seen memorials to Lenin or Stalin obsolescence is tied to their efficacy, a “secure, through design acclaim, the possibilities are lost. senting hope for the future. Lovingers’s design is traditional, a wall toppled and, more recently, statues of sign of the end of grieving, and memori- care of the Grove in the future.” A tall Professor Raveevarn Choksam- Along similar lines, Leor Lovinger, inscribed with names and a narrative, Saddam Hussein lassoed down. als that live on suggest a cultural snag, a order. Unlike the destruction of the batchai of the College of Environmental MLA ‘03, and Gilat Lovinger’s design for but its scale and site plan elaborate inci- The ancients might also give us lack of resolution. Still, the architectural World Trade Center, which was geo- Design, working with Department of the Flight 93 National Memorial, titled sively on this tradition. pause in other ways. After the Persians historian in me wishes that all of these graphically focused and visually iconic, Architecture graduates Jacob Atherton “Disturbed Harmony,” a finalist from sacked Athens, Athenians observed a memorials outlive their usefulness. FW AIDS is a dispersed, misunderstood, and Michael Eggers, and the author of more than 1,000 entries in the competi- One wonders what future generations 50-year period of waiting before they constantly shifting, and ongoing tragedy. this article as consultant, were also tion, manipulates an immense landscape will think of this memorial mania. Will it built on the temple mount, an immensely It is virtually impossible to encompass. finalists in the competition. The team’s to bring out the strange collision of the be seen as a return to the 19th-century patient, solemn, and wise response to 1. Edith M. Stern, “Legacy to the Living,” To grasp the numbers of victims alone project included a field of dense, red, terrorist hijacking and the vernacular obsession with forging permanent mem- destruction—one we might learn from in Coronet 17 (Feb. 1945): 12. goes beyond the ken of most Americans, resinous rods that would glow with landscape of rural Pennsylvania (see pp. ories in the face of unprecedented New York. Such maturity, however, is 2. For the Iwo Jima Memorial, see Karal Ann and to understand the social and cultur- phosphorescence at night and an audio 22-25). A 2.5-mile granite wall (called the change and the violent upheavals of the unthinkable in America’s First City, espe- Marling and John Wetenhall, Iwo Jima: al impact reaches still further. component in which voices eerily count Bravery Wall) meanders through the Industrial Revolution? Is the current cially in its financial center, where land Monuments, Memories, and the American Hero Not surprisingly, given the program and nonconsecutive numbers (fig. 14; also gentle undulations of the land. It is both memorial binge also an attempt to find values demand instant gratification— (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, current trends in architecture, the vast see pp. 38-39). Humming-birds would a memorial wall and a timeline of the temporal anchors in a world undergoing although we might note that the 1991). majority of entries envisioned “fields” of create a canopy as they hover over the event, so that the last moments of this rapid changes driven by digital technol- Acropolis is hardly a low-rent property. 3. Ibid., 14, 31. architectural or sculptural intervention sugar-water-filled rods. Choksambatchi, harrowing flight slowly unfold as one ogy, virtualization, and biotechnology, In our eagerness to do something at rather than single objects. In part, this who has already designed the Woman walks along the wall. The surreal juxta- including cloning and genetic engineer- Ground Zero, we forget that memorial- Andrew M. Shanken is an assistant pro- could be a response to highly publicized Suffrage Memorial in St. Paul (2000) and position is both spatial and temporal, ing? What we do know is that memori- ization and the profit motive are forever fessor of architecture at the College of memorials like Peter Eisenman’s an unbuilt Vietnam Veterans Memorial in drawing out seconds of frenetic tragedy als, like their creators, come and go. at odds, which is why memorials end up Environmental Design.

10 FRAMEWORKS MEMORIALS 11