As power changes and the memorialized fall out of favor, the forces of history have destroyed monuments almost as fast as they go up.
Brooks never really answers how one might design a contemporary memorial in a way that deals with power and authority in more subtle, complex ways, a memorial that celebrates Eisenhower’s obvious greatness, yet acknowledges the “paradoxes” of power: “That leaders have to wield power while knowing they are corrupted by it; that great leaders are superior to their followers while also being of them; that the higher they rise, the more they feel like instruments in larger designs.”
I wish that Brooks would go back and read Gehry’s thoughts on precisely these questions. Few architects faced with the daunting task of making a memorial in the 21st century have thought as deeply about precisely these questions as Gehry has done in the process of designing his monument to Eisenhower. Let’s be specific: The paradoxes and perils of power are addressed in the likely use of Eisenhower’s Guildhall Address as part of the memorial’s text; the tension between being superior to yet of the people is represented in a sculptural grouping that shows Eisenhower with soldiers on the eve of D-Day; and the sense of Eisenhower being part of a larger design is represented in the beautiful tapestries that surround him, connecting him to the land, the past, the people and the nation which he led.
What more does Brooks want?
That insight, in effect, set Jacobson off on the curious-sounding mission of documenting this easily overlooked visual trace. And so he’s ended up collecting nearly a thousand photographs of “Space Available” signage, from dozens of cities all across the country…
Suddenly this near-invisible, mundane element of urban environments everywhere popped into focus. When grouped in a relentless series of hundreds of images, the signs struck me as adding up to a kind of involuntary monument to the Great Recession.
(via Rob Walker: A Place Called “Space Available”: Observers Room: Design Observer)
Writer Alain de Botton has announced plans to build a series of temples for atheists in the UK. The first will be a 46 metre-tall black tower designed by architects Tom Greenall and Jordan Hodgson, constructed in London to represent the idea of perspective.
More on Dezeen » Blog Archive » Alain de Botton plans temples for atheists. Though I still find this a bit puzzling — fact or architecture fiction?
Via Bruce Sterling.
Turbo-sculpture describes the recent rise of interest and popularity in public monuments dedicated to nonpolitical celebrity figures.
Interesting piece.
This is emoji writ large. The Fühl-o-meter/Public Face is an interactive art installation that calibrates the mood of the city in which it has been erected with a monumental illuminated Smiley. The work of artists Richard Wilhelmer, Julius von Bismarck, and Benjamin Maus, the urban emoticon accurately communicates its host city’s gefühlszustand according to “mood data” obtained using integrated software which analyzes photos of the faces of passing pedestrians and processes emotions out of them. Mechanical armatures modulate the face’s expression in real-time, making it appear by turns happy, sad, or apathetic with corresponding gestures (smiley, frown, and blank).
(via Architizer Blog » An Urban Emoticon that Measures the Happiness of Cities)
The world’s most controversial monuments.
On a related note, Foreign Policy names “The World’s Most Controversial Cultural Sites.”
