Colleagues,

Here follows a well argued critical article
that touches on concepts and issues in
architectural design.

Those of you who supervise students whose
work links theory, history, and critique within
the larger frame of social knowledge may
find it useful. It offers a good model of how
to develop distinctions.

Ken Friedman




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                  Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
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             http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/07/arts/07NOTE.html

   June 7, 2001


      NEW WAR MEMORIAL IS SHRINE TO SENTIMENT

      By HERBERT MUSCHAMP


  Three works of architecture in postwar Washington have challenged the
  status quo: I. M. Pei's East Wing of the National Gallery, Maya Lin's
  Vietnam Veterans Memorial and James Ingo Freed's United States Holocaust
  Memorial Museum. They owe their distinction to the skill with which they
  honor the Enlightenment concept of clear geometric form while rejecting
  the ornamental particularities of neo-Classical style.

  Mr. Pei introduced geometric abstraction and asymmetry into an
  illustrational backdrop of classical order. Ms. Lin opposed the
  horizontal contour of a sunken black chevron against a city of white
  columns. Mr. Freed, in the most astonishing inversion of the city's
  classical harmony, turned his stone facade into a sinister symbol of the
  totalitarian state. All three designs developed abstract geometry into
  complex formal vocabularies. The forms enabled them to express complex
  ideas. As a result, they honored the Enlightenment tradition of daring to
  know. They renewed the meaning of the neo-Classical buildings around
  them.

  By contrast, Friedrich St. Florian's design for the National World War II
  Memorial diminishes the substance of its architectural context. The
  design does not dare to know. It is, instead, a shrine to the idea of not
  knowing or, more precisely, of forgetting. It erases the historical
  relationship of World War II to ourselves. It puts sentiment in the place
  where knowledge ought to be.

  An aura of inevitability surrounded the memorial even before the
  legislation to build it had been signed. It is the aura we have come to
  associate with certain Hollywood movies -- "Pearl Harbor" being the most
  recent example -- whose commercial success is virtually guaranteed even
  if critical esteem eludes them.

  As designed by Mr. St. Florian, the Rhode Island architect, the memorial
  reproduces a style of architecture associated with the World War II
  period and the decade preceding it. Sometimes called modern classical,
  the style was frequently used by architects for federal buildings in
  Washington and elsewhere. Columns and pilasters are more massive than the
  classical orders, typically rectangular rather than round. Friezes,
  lettering and articulation of the volume substitute for antique
  refinements like fluting and scrolls.

  The project, whose construction may be speeded by legislation that
  President Bush signed last week, will occupy 7.4 acres on the Mall. The
  bulk of this is properly described as landscape, rather than
  architectural, design. It incorporates the area now occupied by the
  Rainbow Pool, at the eastern end of the Reflecting Pool between the
  Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial.

  The pool will be restored and enclosed by two hemicircles of steles. The
  56 granite pillars 17 feet tall represent each state, territory and the
  District of Columbia during that war period. Arched pavilions 43 feet
  high on the north and south ends of the plaza will be dedicated to the
  Atlantic and Pacific theaters of the war. The design's best feature is
  its sensitivity to the site. Scale notwithstanding, the memorial is not
  the visual obstruction many have feared. The remodeled Reflecting Pool,
  which has been in a state of decrepitude for years, will enhance, not
  diminish, the existing vistas. The hemicircular arrangement enables the
  steles to be partly screened by trees.

  Still, the design is seriously flawed. Its classical vocabulary does not
  create the transcendent framework that the sponsors (the American Battle
  Monuments Commission and an advisory board) seem to have in mind. Rather,
  the forms employed are charged with historical and ideological content
  that contradicts this apparent intention.

  Some critics have compared St. Florian's design to the work of Albert
  Speer, Hitler's armaments minister. A trained architect, Speer was chosen
  by the Führer to redesign Berlin as Germania, the colossally scaled
  capital of the Thousand Year Reich. The comparison is overwrought. The
  memorial's modern classical style was favored by Mussolini, Roosevelt,
  Stalin and other government leaders in the 1930's. Examples of this style
  can be found all over Washington and in many other cities with federal
  courthouses, post offices and other government buildings designed in the
  1930's and 40's. In that limited sense, St. Florian's design is true to
  the events it commemorates.

  But the design also reveals the hazard of relying on period styles to
  evoke memories of past events. Those who expect memorials to deepen
  historical awareness will be disappointed by the design. Theoretically,
  the memorial has been conceived to honor those who fought in service of
  democracy. In fact, the style chosen recalls a period gripped by the
  widespread fear that democracy was doomed.

  In the United States, this fear was held alike by left and right wings of
  the political spectrum. Democracy, so the reasoning went, equaled
  individualism, and unbridled individualism had precipitated the
  catastrophe of the Depression. Only strong centralized government,
  whether socialist or fascist, could lead the country out of the mess.
  Political extremes met in the bombastic form of massive granite facades,
  square pilasters, eagles and other motifs from the repertory of ancient
  Rome.

  This is an astonishing message to reiterate at a time that professes
  opposition to Big Government. Though the message may be unintentional,
  the design nonetheless displays a profound sense of historical amnesia.
  There is a difference between architecture and propaganda, even if
  Washington is a city where the distinction is easily blurred. The
  memorial's design can't be accurately appraised without venturing into
  the fog. Washington's core formal concept -- its neo-Classical plan and
  architectural aesthetic -- is symbolically sound. Architects of the
  Enlightenment saw neo-Classicism as a reaction to rococo excess. The
  relative clarity of the style's geometrical forms represented scientific
  reason. It suited the idea of a nation governed by laws, not men.

  But Enlightenment architects also believed that art and architecture
  adhered to universal laws. It was the job of the academies to discover
  and enforce them. It turns out, however, that the culture of a modern
  democracy thrives on challenging this belief. Our political system is
  great because it enables authority to be challenged. Washington is
  relatively insubstantial architecturally because it does not. The city's
  Fine Arts Commission, the agency charged with regulating architectural
  aesthetics, is more or less in the business of preventing such challenges
  from materializing where they might distract visiting schoolchildren from
  the overwhelming impression of authority.

  In recent years, "World War II" has come to epitomize the use and misuse
  of historical memory. Tom Brokaw's best-selling books, Steven Spielberg's
  blockbuster movies, a forthcoming 10-part HBO miniseries "based on the
  true story of the men of Easy Company" and other offerings have
  simultaneously increased historical awareness and substituted emotional
  manipulation for it.

  However sincere the intentions of individual writers, filmmakers and
  producers of commercial spinoffs, the cause of remembering the war has
  also served the objective of forgetting the unfolding of history before
  and since. Before Vietnam, before Watergate, before the cultural
  distortions of the cold war, there was an age of moral certainty, a time
  innocent of complexity, irony or ambiguity. This time can be bracketed
  between the years 1939 and 1945.

  But this view of the war years is rooted in the moral uncertainties of
  our own day. So is the World War II Memorial's design. It represents our
  yearning for the timeless and eternal to distract us from the relative
  and the complex. After the failures of the so-called American Century,
  that yearning is understandable and even heroic, up to a point. If the
  soldiers who fought in the war aren't entitled to such sentiments, who
  is?

  But the yearning for a transcendent meaning raises new complexities in
  turn. When Washington was conceived, it was possible to imagine a nation
  that would stand outside history, including its own. It would adhere to
  the Enlightenment belief in natural law. That belief, along with its
  architectural representation, remains valid in the case of government
  institutions.

  In the case of historical memory, it is inadequate. We do not honor
  history by seeking to transcend it. Nor do we transcend it by copying
  period styles. The sponsors of the St. Florian design want it both ways.
  They ask us to accept that a period style can remember and transcend
  simultaneously. Instead, these goals neutralize each other. At best, the
  result represents a failure of historical imagination. This failure
  condemns a potential work of architecture to a level of well-designed
  propaganda.

  Mr. St. Florian's design looks like a monument. It looks like history. It
  was probably chosen on account of its generic appearance. And in a city
  whose public architecture often resembles a revolving rack of postcards,
  well-designed propaganda may well pass for authenticity itself.

  This may be a case where people will want to decide for themselves where
  their sentiments about the war lie. That is because the official World
  War II Memorial gives the impression of being foisted upon us, like it or
  not. The impression is not entirely false. It stems from the embattled
  condition of public space in the era of privatization. Isn't this the
  heart of the problem? For all its claims to moral certainty, the memorial
  is mired in our present-day confusion over the rights and
  responsibilities of government in the management of public space.

  Want to adopt a highway? A park or civic monument? A school? A prison? A
  symphony hall? Someone has to do it, or else these pieces of property
  will sink back into the primordial ooze or its modern version, real
  estate development.

  In the United States, public space is rapidly becoming a subsidiary of
  the entertainment industry. Television occupies a vast majority of the
  social realm once defined by streets, town halls, public squares.
  Computers take up an increasing share of the rest. Then come shopping
  malls, business improvement districts, theme parks, multiplexes and
  Indian casinos. There's a bit left over for sidewalks, but perhaps not
  for long. It's too expensive to police them. They've got to pay their
  way. Eventually someone will patrol them with surveillance cameras and
  market the videos on reality pay TV.

  The World War II Memorial can be seen as a monument to the military-
  entertainment industry complex, our new enforcers of the global Pax
  American Pop Culture. It is a Spielberg production featuring Tom Hanks in
  a cast of all-star unknown soldiers. Naturally, the design looks
  authentic. It's a special effect. A digitized backdrop, like the
  Colosseum in "Gladiator." Mr. St. Florian's simulated national monument
  is perfect, down to every period detail.

  No one can say that this project is out of step with our recent political
  life. It is faithful to Ronald Reagan, who confused making combat
  training movies with actually seeing wartime action. To George Bush
  senior, the president who defeated the "Vietnam syndrome" with the
  televised Operation Desert Storm. And to Bill Clinton, the maestro of
  public emoting, choking back tears on Normandy Beach.

  The National Mall, however, is not the place for a permanent movie set,
  nor should the public be treated like a captive audience. If you don't
  like "Pearl Harbor," you can always walk out. If the buzz around "Saving
  Private Ryan" or "Schindler's List" strikes you as manipulative and
  overblown, you can stay away from the multiplex. These options will not
  be available for visitors to the Mall. You liked the movie. You'll love
  the building. It will outlive you, anyhow.


             http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/07/arts/07NOTE.html
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                  Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
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