An Exploration of the Relationship Between Architecture and History in Monuments
Acknowledgements Design, and architecture especially, is a highly collaborative medium. I’ve always held that no one creates in a vacuum and the people around us are instrumental in the process of creation. I’d like to thank everyone in my thesis group: Lindsey Buyer, Beliz Saltik, Sue Jung, Theresa Moriarty, Gogo Zhu, Ashleigh Walker, Atharva Ranade, Zach Mang, and Katie Genre for their contributions toward the development of this project and the refinement of my ideas, with special commendations to Andy Merida and Lexi Fuller who took the brunt of my inquisitions. I’d also like to thank my advisor, Hilary Bryon, for the countless contributions she made not only to this thesis, but to my education and design philosophy in general; as well as other professors who have helped me in my thesis and education as an architect, Jim Bassett, Michael Ermann, Edward Becker, Steve Thompson, CL Bohannon, and all staff at CAUS. A special thank you to my parents and family, who funded this whole endeavor, as well as encouraged me when I told them I wanted to explore the arts as a profession. And last, but certainly not least, a very special thank you to my love, Jenna, for supporting me in all of this.
Contents
Preface
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Introduction
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Stations Plantation
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Chapel
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Isolation
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River
68
Community
70
House
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Orchard
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Process
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Bibliography
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Image Sources
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Preface understanding history through monuments
Preface History and Myth
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Vercengetorix was a largely forgotten historical figure until the rise of French nationalism. This is an example of historical drift. Neglected historical figures rise to prominence with the advent of new values in the cultural zeitgeist.
The methodology used in designing monuments must be carefully considered by artists and architects. Monuments are physical manifestations of people and events deemed by a consensus in the contemporary culture to be significant to their history. Many works of classical literature impart historical and moral lessons to the audience. When one develops a monument, in whatever medium,1 that person is acting as a historiographer. History, in and of itself as a presentation of facts, is not a monument. The monument is developed when a message is being conveyed by the work. History is filtered and distilled. The historiographer makes decisions of emphasis to provoke thought or emotion in their audience. With the advent of new generations, history quickly gives way to myth and the conflation of facts in coordination with the zeitgeist. Influential figures fall out of reverence and icons crumble, then are replaced with new, more “respectable” icons. The natural consequence of this is a distortion of facts in favor of a focused narrative, a historical drift. Artistry is used to create a monument which is engaging to the senses and invokes the spirit of both history and the audience. In a monument, as it is with any work of art, there is always a story, a theme, an intention, a protagonist, an antagonist, etc., all the apparatuses of narrative storytelling. There is a distinction to make: there is no difference between history and legend relative to monuments. This is not to say the facts of history as real events and legends as a real event may be conflated, but the cultural memory with which each are embodied is the same, and their presence in culture carries the same implications of identity.2 Each individual embodies his or her own culture and subsequently, creates their own world. Each world is different as each individual is different and constantly being shaped by experience and broader worlds. These worlds are not unreal, as they are true and have real consequences, but many have no bearing on the broader reality. Instead, they are irreal, a manifestation of the individual. The passion and drive with which people internalize stories is what determines their reality in culture and in their worlds. “Consider, to begin with, the statements ‘The sun always moves’ and ‘The sun never moves’ which, though equally true, are at odds with each other. Shall we say, then, that they describe different worlds, and indeed that there are as many different worlds as there are such mutually exclusive truths? Rather, we are inclined to regard the two strings of words not as complete statements with truthvalues of their own but as elliptical for some such statement as ‘Under frame of reference A, the sun always moves’ and ‘Under frame of reference B, the sun never moves’ –statements that may both be true of the same world.” Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking, 2 Goodman demonstrates that what is true, while not irrelevant, is subject to the “frame of reference” of the individual.3 Thus, though one’s frame of reference, history and legend intertwine to form cultural myth, and in many cases making distinctions between them is
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Royer, Vercingetorix Throws Down His Arms at the Feet of Julius Caesar, 1899
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Be it writing, painting, architecture, etc. Goodman, The Ways of Worldmaking, 5 Goodman, The Ways of Worldmaking, 2
History and Myth impossible. Often, this manifests in the development of a religion, cult, or fetish. There are many mythic figures, many of them having been based on people who were real – who lived and talked and ate – and their mythic status in culture is informed by their actions. Over time a historical drift takes effect though historiography and creates the irreal myth. It is important to distinguish what a monument is and what it means to a society’s culture. A monument is any designed artifact that can represent a physical manifestation of culture. Structures, books, films, music, and paintings are some modes of elaboration, not of the real, but of the irreal history that acts as a representation in the zeitgeist. Virgil’s epic poem the Aeneid is an excellent example of an irreal national myth. The work, circa 25 BCE, was commissioned by Emperor Augustus of Rome as a justification of his dynasty. The Roman Republic had ended with a loud thud as Julius Caesar was 2 assassinated and the Empire was forged in the broken aftermath. With Rome suffering heavily under the series of civil wars fought between the Caesarians and the Pompeiians and between Augustus and Mark Antony, consistency of leadership was craved by many Romans. Augustus provided this consistency, but Romans were extremely superstitious and required a tremendous amount of religious justification with regards to their civic governments.4-5 The Aeneid served to justify the Julio-Claudian dynasty, even the Punic Wars against Carthage are justified retroactively.6-7 The Aeneid is a monument to the glory of Rome and to its new protector, Emperor Augustus. The consistency of the human experience is what unites the irreal in myth. Human society relies on the consistency of human emotion to form a cohesive culture. This consistency forms the framework around which the irreal forms. Humans rely on stories and narratives to deepen their understanding of the irreal. It is impossible for a human to understand existence in its totality. Complicit in this is a self-evident disconnection from real history due to temporal immobility. Limitations in scale, intelligence, and imagination necessitate the relationship between stories and existence. In our worlds, these stories form myths, which transform culture, which inform our irreal worlds. The analogues and mechanisms used to describe and relay stories of fiction are the same used to describe history and past. The same internal mechanisms of understanding make these fictions so powerful and, in some ways, these stories are designed to be more powerful than nonfictitious stories. Firsthand accounts of events are irreal personal narratives. Even today this is the case; many irreal histories are being written at any moment. Nevertheless, the myth tends to unite a culture’s definitions of the irreal. It is the cultural determination of truth, or at least what must be true. The story permeates and influences all. History is learned by stories, through narrative. This is not to say the themes of a narrative are consistently read in the author’s intention. Contemporary perceptions change a narrative’s themes with the understanding of competing narratives compiled over time.
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The pomerium of Rome is a perfect example of a religious boundary with political implications. Beard, Religions of Rome, 177 "I pray that shore be opposed to shore, water to wave/ weapon to weapon: let them fight, them and their descendants." Virgil, Aeneid, 105 Uden, "Historical Context for Virgil's Aeneid"
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The depiction of Aeneis as a heroic figure is in line with the intention of the story.
Luca Giordano, Aeneas and Turnus, 17th Century
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Preface Aesthetics
"we do not just mean that the object has some magnitude, but we also imply that this magnitude is superior to that of many other objects of the same kind, yet without indicating this superiority determinately." Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement, 104
"the liking for the sublime contains not so much a positive pleasure as rather admiration and respect, and so should be called a negative pleasure." Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement, 98 "We perceive atmosphere through our emotional sensibility – a form of perception that works incredibly quickly, and which we humans evidently need to help us survive." Peter Zumthor, Atmospheres, 13
The relationship between icon and emotion must be carefully considered by architects and artists in their designing of monuments. An icon is a form which suggests a meaning and in the case of monuments, a meaningful form which must serve to orient the visitor towards history in a sort of critical temporalism. It is an aesthetic9 dictation of historical meaning. The icon must not overwhelm or overly aestheticize the monument, though it should be aesthetically attractive, as emotion must be clearly conveyed by aesthetic elements such as tectonics, light, sound, material, spatial orientation, and atmosphere. To understand how utilize an icon effectively, one must understand the sublime. In Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment, he makes the distinction between the beautiful and the sublime. Kant supposes that beauty lies in the aesthetic pleasure derived from the form of an object, whereas the sublime is formless and boundless. The sublime is a concept and emotion not attached to any icon or form, but to “an indeterminate concept of reason.”10 Kant describes this realization in terms of magnitude primarily. Kant describes the sublime as an internal emotional reaction than an external relationship to something aesthetically pleasing.11 The sublime inspires awe in its boundlessness and greatness. It is so boundless and intense in its magnitude it becomes ineffable to comprehension. It is the aesthetic transcending the power of human understanding.12 In this transcendence, sublimity becomes something to be feared, but not to be fearful of, as it has no dominion over humans. Kant describes it has having a “negative pleasure.” A monument must relate to this idea of sublimity through magnitude. One need not make a large monument to convey ideas of magnitude, however there must be a significant icon that orients to the event the monument seeks to narrate. This icon will demonstrate the magnitude necessary for the monument to achieve sublimity. Without this orienting icon, there will be a lack of “negative pleasure” as the necessary referent is absent. The monument balances iconic meaning with the atmosphere of a space. The relationship between an iconic referent and the atmosphere of the monument is the critical point of any monument, especially as they relate to works of architecture. Atmosphere is non-representational and so, not created by proper understanding of historical iconography and semiotics, but by the thoughtful making of spaces13 using the aesthetic elements outlined in the first paragraph of this section. These elements form a work of architecture and allow it to be an emotionally resonant work. Zumthor discusses atmosphere as the totality of combined elements coming together to create an environment.14 This extends beyond form and includes sound and smells, something architecture rarely considers in schematic design aside form noise reduction and preventing decay due to natural elements penetrating the building. Using spatial elements, architects construct non-spatial elements. This is not as difficult as it might seem, as all sensory perceptions exist within spatial reality. Architects are responsible for focusing these perceptions to creates an atmosphere in the architecture of a monument in line with historiographic intentions. This is becoming more complex than ever as society moves into the post-modern era. 9 10 11 12 13 14
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This is the Kantian usage of "aesthetic" meaning intuitive, as defined in Critique of Judgement, 107 Kant, Critique of Judgement, 98 Kant, Critique of Judgement, 98 Kant, Critique of Judgement, 105 In his many lectures to students, Louis Kahn defined architecture as "the thoughtful making of spaces." Zumthor, Atmospheres, 17
Aesthetics The creation of a monument necessitates the creation of a new irreal world. Great care must be taken to avoid falling into the sand-pit of representation that is Jean Baudrillard’s precession of simulacra. All monuments are simulations of reality; this is unavoidable. It is important not to stumble into the lower degrees of representation as described by Baudrillard: “Representation stems from the physical equivalence of the sign and the real (even if this equivalence is utopian, it is a fundamental axiom). Simulation, of the contrary, stems from the utopia of the principle of equivalence, from the radical negation of the sign as value, from the sign as the reversion and death sentence of every reference. Whereas representation attempts to absorb simulation by interpreting it as a false representation, simulation envelopes the whole edifice of representation itself as a simulacrum. Such would be the successive phases of the image: it is the reflection of a profound reality; it masks and denatures a profound reality; it masks the absence of a profound reality; it has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum.” Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 6 As Baudrillard makes clear, the simulacrum is the copy without an original; it is the origin of mythic distortion in the post-modern era. This is as true in architecture as it is in any other form of representation. It is tempting to use exact replicas of architectural structures contemporary to the period or event in question. However, this is a trap that will only generate a simulacrum. Louis Kahn stated as much in his essay on monumentality in 1944. It was his belief that the worlds of contemporary architects can never match the worlds of the builders of great historical works of architecture. The icon must be transformed in some way to create an effective atmosphere; it cannot be a one-to-one transition throughout time. The historiographic work must be present in the architecture of the monument.
"No architect can rebuild a cathedral of another epoch embodying the desires, the aspirations, the love and hate of the people whose heritage it became." Louis Kahn, Essential Texts, 22
Application in Political Aesthetics To better understand Baudrillard’s precession of simulacra as it relates to design, one can examine the monuments of the 20th century philosophies: socialism; capitalism; and fascism. The style of art expressed in Soviet monuments is often called socialist realism.3-5 These monuments are the archetypal Soviet era propagandistic sculptures and art that served as monuments to the power of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. They typically depict workers, farmers, miners, etc., in heroic and resplendent poses. They
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Preface demonstrate the glory of the worker in his post and the narrative is clear: the greatest thing you can do is produce, and contribute that production to the group for the glory of the proletariat. One motivation of these monuments was to obfuscate the failures of the ideology they espoused. Bread lines, failing production, low wages, etc. were masked in the art of socialist realism. The art is remarkably anonymous. In almost every example of monumental socialist realism there are two figures, one to represent men and one to represent women. With that anonymity comes a lack of specificity; the figures depicted are meant to be the common worker. They could be anyone in the Union who worked under the ideology of socialism. This is the second degree in Baudrillard’s precession of simulacra: the simulation that masks and denatures a profound reality.15 Contrasting the socialist to the capitalist, building an architectural ‘monument’ to capitalism would be counterintuitive, redundant, and pointless. Capital exists as the monument to capitalism. Disneyland6 is the often-used example when discussing signs in capitalistic cultures. Baudrillard considered it to be “a perfect model of all entangled orders of simulacra”.16 Disneyland is a place which markets itself as being of the imaginary, of the unreal. As a capitalistic institution, it sells a commodity, but remarkably the commodity it sells is imagination. Disneyland is the commodification of the imaginary through the aesthetic. The natural state of affairs in a capitalistic culture is ceaseless commodification. The success of Disneyland’s sale depends on the aestheticization of something which does not exist. What’s more is that it accomplishes this. It makes the imaginary the “real,” and this leaves no place for the real.17 This is Baudrillard’s third order of simulation, masking the absence of a profound reality.18 However, the effects of Disneyland go further.
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"Disneyland is presented as reality to make us believe everything else is real, whereas all of Los Angeles and the America that surrounds it are no longer real, but belong to the hyperreal order and the order of simulation." Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 12 This aggregation of worlds creates the atmosphere of Disneyland, the icon that it is focused through is nonexistent. Disneyland is a monument without an icon. It barricades itself in its aesthetics and expands endlessly to stave off the inevitable suffocation of the anaesthetization of imagination that will bring only an atmosphere of boredom and familiarity. Sublimity – which would prevent this – is absent in Disneyland. Because of this, Disneyland becomes a ‘prop’ to the hyperreal order. With the advent of Nazism in 1930’s Germany came a series of rallies held in Nuremburg at a zeppelin field. Albert Speer, the Minister of Armaments and dedicated architect of the Nazi regime, created the Cathedral of Light7 using flak lights8 aimed up into the sky to simulate gigantic luminous columns. This ephemeral construct was meant to convey to the German people the triumph of their nation and to glorify order, martial thinking, and war. The icon utilizes sublime monumentality to invoke the sublimity of war. It is the anesthetization of war and the anaesthetization of it effects. It is undoubtedly
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Bucas and Vaivada, Agriculture, 1952 Mukhina, The Worker and Kolkhoz Woman, 1937 Brodsky, Stalin, before 1939 Disneyland, Main Street
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Petrov, "The Industry of Truing: Socialist Realism, Reality, Realization", 874 Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 12 Leach, The Anaesthetics of Architecture, 3 Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 12
Application in Political Aesthetics effective at conveying its message. The Cathedral of Light creates fanaticism through this anaesthetization of politics.19 The benefit of living in the future is a scoreboard, and the Nazi’s Reich, which was ‘destined’ to last a thousand years, fell after only twelve. With this historical scoreboard, we are able to look back on the Cathedral of Light as a hollow icon of fascism. The themes shift. We do not lose focus of the original theme, but our understanding is expanded with the awareness of other narratives. For the people of Germany in the 1930’s, Speer’s vision simulated the reality that fascist ideology demanded and German citizens swiftly found it to be their reality. Signs began to dictate reality. The signs of Nazi Germany still carry impact, though that impact has shifted away from declaring the self-evident glory of a “master race” to declaring the self-evident horror of what a group of people did for the twelve years they held fasces over their corner of the world. The rise of the fascists in Germany demonstrates how images which reflect the absence of a profound reality can lead to the images becoming their own reality. In many ways the emergence of Nazi Germany was the emergence of simulacra, and it took a war to reverse the process and break it.20-21 Violence, which was anaesthetized by the simulation of war in the Cathedral of Light, came to destroy the ideology it stood for. Violent delights have violent ends.22 These three political orders – communism, capitalism, and fascism – are systems meant to negotiate the rise of the proletariat masses in the aftermath of the industrial revolution. Their monuments and their messages are directed at the lower classes and meant to prescribe their proper relationship with the upper classes.23 For instance, the fascists say, “you will demonstrate your inherent glory if you fight for us”; the capitalists say, “you will be great if you buy this from us”; and the communists say, “we are made great though your contributions and you should continue to make them”. These are all proclamations aimed at citizens of a culture to manipulate their position within society. These are the simulations of image to be avoided in monuments. Thoughtless aestheticization leads, inevitably, to the anesthetization of history. What is critical in monuments is not the imparting of the tenets of an ideology, but in the understanding of one. This may include the tenets, but care must be takes as to not aestheticize them without the proper temporally orienting iconography and emotionally orienting atmosphere. The cultural benefit of monuments is the facilitation of cultural identity, but the personal benefit is the facilitation of cultural understanding. Through monuments the irreal can be comprehended. Thus, the worlds humans create can be understood or challenged, and this is the ultimate purpose of a monument.
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flak lights such as this were used to create the Cathedral of Light 9
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Monuments in the Post-Modern Era The Vietnam Veterans Memorial9-11 (designed by Maya Lin in 1982) is, no doubt, the closest we have ever come to achieving a synthesis of icon and emotion in a way that the icon serves to impact emotion without commodifying it. The form of the monument, located in Washington, DC, is deceptively simple. A bent black retaining wall of highly 19 20 21 22 23
Leach, The Anaesthetics of Architecture, 21 This is Baudrillard’s third degree of image becoming the fourth. Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 6 As Friar Laurence said in Romeo and Juliet. Leach, The Anaesthetics of Architecture, 22
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Speer, Cathedral of Light, 1936 150 cm flak searchlight Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 1982 Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 1982 Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 1982
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Preface "I had a general idea that I wanted to describe a journey...a journey that would make you experience death and where you'd have to be an observer, where you could never really fully be with the dead. It wasn't going to be something that was going to say, 'It's all right, it's all over,' because it's not." Maya Lin 12
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Hart, The Three Servicemen, 1984 Zumthor, Steilneset Memorial, 2011 Zumthor, Steilneset Memorial, 2011
polished granite cuts into a pristine green field. A pathway slopes down, paralleling the wall toward the crease at the deepest point, and slopes up again along the other half of the folded abutment. The black, paneled face of the wall is inscribed with the names of those who died in the war. The icon of a grave marker is invoked by the walls, as well as the idea of burying the dead and the idea of a scar. The living are brought down into the ground to align with the dead, separated only by their names and black granite. The names serve not only as a focal point of the individual casualty, but as a quantifying and orienting image to the Vietnam War. Just by the inclusion of names, visitors can understand the scale and magnitude of the war. The wall is highly interactive and the whole monument requires tactile interaction. It is a place where people reference both a relationship to the war and to the dead. It is not about understanding what the people involved in the war, both domestically and abroad, did and felt. In such an event, any consistency of experience is a phantasm. Of the soldiers in Vietnam during the war, only one in five saw combat action.24 The direct experience of the Vietnam War was so wide ranging that any attempt to portray it as a cohesive single image would be disingenuous. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial manages to deepen an understanding of history without aestheticizing war. Aesthetic elements are included, but at no point do they overtake the icon. The Vietnam Memorial is a statement of one simple fact: these are the names of the people that won’t be coming back. It gives us ownership of this fact through the historiographic artistry and we are left to do with it what we will. Decisions made beyond this are decisions that relate directly to how the visitor experiences the monument. This is what make the addition of the Three Soldiers (or Three Servicemen)12 by Frederick Hart such an artistic assault. When Maya Lin’s monument won the design competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, there was a reactionary panic, which led to the commission of Hart’s sculpture. The reactionaries had little faith that Lin’s design to honor the veterans of the war fulfilled the conventional expectations of a memorial. Secretary of the Interior James Watt was prompted to issue an ultimatum to the design which included changing the black walls to white and positioning a statue of a wounded soldier with a flag in a central position of the wall. The US Commission of Fine Arts, which had final approval of the design of the memorial, implemented a compromise. The wall would maintain its original design, but the statue and flag would be added nearby.25 Three male figures of different ethnic backgrounds, cast in bronze and larger than life-size, stare toward the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial. This addition is the epitome of an aestheticization of history in a monument. You have three figures of men, “heroic-size”, one being a composite image of three men.26 Clearly, the icon of the soldiers does not achieve the sublimity required by a monumental icon. In no way does this sculpture deepen any understanding of history or of the Vietnam War, or of the essential human condition. Peter Zumthor’s Steilneset Memorial13-14 is dedicated to the people accused in the Vardø Witch Trials. 91 people were burned at the stake under the accusations of practicing witchcraft in 1621 in Vardø, Norway.27 The monument has two unequal parts, a largescale building designed in its entirety by Peter Zumthor, and a sculpture by the late Louise 24 25 26 27
Ward, The Vietnam War PBS Only the Caucasian figure’s model was declared as a member of the United States Marine Corp and despite this it is unclear if he took part in the Vietnam War according to Hart's press release for the dedication of the sculpture. This is another example of "historical drift" in which the previously condemned become honored.
Monuments in the Postmodern Era Bourgeois. The building is composed of a long walkway suspended inside a wooden frame similar to a traditional, local fish drying racks or “hjell.”15 A long ramp leads up into the interior of the form which is dimly lit — the only light coming from 91 small square windows and 91 tiny light bulbs, meant to represent the 91 people executed.28 The atmosphere of the interior is a heavy presence; the hallway is ribbed in such a way that it seems to stretch on forever. It is dark, and the focus of the viewer becomes the lights, those who stood accused. Information on the victims is displayed through the hall. It is instantly an environment which elicits an emotional response. This is Zumthor’s understanding of atmosphere:
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“We perceive atmosphere through our emotional sensibilities – a form of perception that works incredibly quickly, and which we humans evidently need to help us survive. Not every situation grants us time to make up our minds on whether or not we like something or whether indeed we might be better heading in the opposite direction. Something inside us tells us an enormous amount straight away. We are capable of immediate appreciation, of a spontaneous emotional response, of rejecting things in a flash.” Peter Zumthor, Atmospheres, 13 Juxtaposing Zumthor’s atmospheric building is the memorial designed by Louise 17 Bourgeois.16 A chair with fire coming out of the seat sits in the center of a concrete pit surrounded by circular mirrors which are aimed at the chair. This is an icon which overwhelms the themes to the point of commodification. When creating a literal “hot seat”, the themes of intimidation, paranoia, distrust, and persecution become smothered by the aesthetic symbol. This is the icon supplanting the real. Similar to the Lin and Zumthor memorials, the Jewish Museum in Berlin by Daniel 18 Libeskind17-19 demonstrates a critical awareness of these issues. It steers away from the conventional symbolism of the holocaust and instead, creates architectural icons from the well-known icons of the holocaust29 in a way which stresses volume and material to drive the body to feel. The sublimity of spaces such as the Holocaust Tower are spaces meant to stress the physical, and the atmosphere can be felt in the bodies of visitors. It emphasizes verticality and is irregular in its plans and dimensions. Darkness is used effectively with the acoustical properties of the space to create an atmosphere of fear. The use of atmosphere drives the historiographic narrative though the zig-zagging form of the building. This is not an escape from the iconic, but an effective use of a deconstructed iconography to orient the visitor temporally and to create an atmosphere which imparts an emotion critical to the understanding of the Holocaust: terror. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, designed by Peter Eisenman,20-21 is an extremely aesthetic monument. The monument is composed of 2711 rectangular concrete stelae organized in an imprecise grid along an undulating ground plane. The use of icon is apparent in these repeated concrete masses. They serve as the 28 29
Frearson, " Steilneset Memorial by Peter Zumthor and Louise Bourgeois" Such as the infamous gas chambers of the Nazi concentration camps.
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Hjell, Norway Bourgeois, Steilneset Memorial, 2011 Libeskind, Jewish Museum plan, Berlin, 2001 Libeskind, Holocaust Tower at the Jewish Museum, Berlin, 2001
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Preface iconic referent to graves. However, the urban environment and the advent of social media have enticed many young people to use the Memorial to the Murdered Jews as a backdrop to smiling carefree pictures. This dissonance has led to the development of “Yolocaust”, satirical images in which these images of people are cropped from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews and superimposed onto actual images of the Holocaust. What creates this dissonance?30 Many monuments are aesthetically beautiful, but it’s rare to see this level of disconnection between the visitors and the monument’s intended emotional response. Likely, the dissonance is injected via the abstractions of the graves. These icons orient towards death, but not towards any specific instance of death, nor do they orient the visitor temporally towards the Holocaust. As previously mentioned, the icon must serve to orient towards history and this is not achieved in the Memorial to the Murdered Jews. Moreover, the atmosphere of the monument is in contention with the message the historiography intended to present. The urban context and the lack of hierarchy or axial movement in the circulation of the monument means that movement is entirely democratic. There is no intended point of entry, there is no direction of promenade as there is in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is not a graveyard as one typically understands it. Graveyards and cemeteries have pronounced entrances and boundaries, they have information about the people buried there which proves that there are people buried there. The graves are occupied. In Maya Lin’s monument the burial reference succeeds because the connection to the dead is fully established by the inclusion of names. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe does not utilize the iconography of a grave in an effective manner which orients the viewer temporally towards the Holocaust. It does not create an atmosphere in line with the historiographic intentions a monument to the victims of the Holocaust requires. Instead, it is an aesthetic reference to death via the stelae, elements which have many other associations throughout history other than death. It is the anaesthetization of the Holocaust through aestheticization and the beginning of commodification. Theodor Adorno writes in his essay “Cultural Criticism and Society” that “[t]o write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.”31 This is to say that representations of the Holocaust should not “mystify and mythologize” the actual events. Adorno dreaded Baudrillard’s fourth order of image, the simulacrum, in which a constant reproduction of images eventually anesthetizes and cheapens the real.32 What Adorno does not reference is the natural tendency to mythologize history through historiography. The Holocaust, along with every other moment in history, has been elevated to the cultural power and significance of a revered legend. Part of this is due to the sheer unfathomability of the event, and part due to the fetishization of Holocaust study. The importance of remembrance cannot be understated. However a remembrance through singularly aesthetic means is the first step to the commodification of history and tragedy. The question hanging like the sword of Damocles over every monument designer’s head is: How does one represent a traumatic image without romanticizing, anaesthetizing, or commodifying the event?
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Libeskind, Garden of Exile at the Jewish Museum, Berlin, 2001 Eisenman, Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, 2004 Eisenman, Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, 2004
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Brody, "The Inadequacy of Berlin's ‘Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe" Adorno, "Cultural Criticism and Society" Deacu, "The Architecture of Excess: Image Fabrication Between Space and Anaesthesia", 28
The Underground Railroad a monument to freedom and identity
The Underground Railroad This thesis explores the relationship between architecture and history by way of the Underground Railroad, a network of safehouses and people who aided escaping slaves in the antebellum period across the American South and North. An estimated 100,000 slaves escaped with the help of the Underground Railroad. The thesis itself is designed as an aggregated monument to the Underground Railroad in seven parts, termed “stations.” Each station takes a position along an imagined route of the Underground Railroad. Each station represents a specific aspect of the narrative of the Underground Railroad in its design and program. From south to north, the stations are , , , , , , and . Each station is distinct in its program and semi-autonomous in its position in the overall Underground Railroad monument as it would have been in the Underground Railroad. Compartmentalization was a critical element of the Underground Railroad. Each “conductor” would know only the route between two stations on the network. This was to prevent the collapse of the entire network of safehouses should one agent become compromised. Concordantly, each station includes a design element from the preceding building and the succeeding building. However, the first building and the last building have no aesthetic relationship. This supports the esoteric and obfuscated nature of the subject. The inclusion of aesthetically separated icons also contributes the idea of a monument to the obfuscated. In the Underground Railroad, the elimination of mysterious elements would mean the destruction of the nature of the Underground Railroad and the collapse of the network. This monument seeks to protect this enigmatic nature. The atmosphere of each building is structured in concordance with the narrative themes of the historiography. That is to say, a station creating an atmosphere of terror will lead to a station creating an atmosphere of relief. The aggregation of atmospheres unites the stations into a monument, forming a narrative of identity. This is demonstrated in the way events shaped the identity not only of the Underground Railroad, but of the slaves it helped to escape from a system which repressed their identities and culture. The balance between these two components, sublime icon and emotive atmosphere, constitutes the primary architectural focus within the seven stations. Each building manages the icon uniquely; some deconstruct, some reaffirm, and some blatantly eschew the icon. The thesis asserts this is how monuments should be thought of when designed. The precise geographic locations of the buildings are irrelevant. The critical aspects of site lie in the natural features of the landscape. Because the monument represents something beyond site, such as a battlefield or a birthplace, the precise location is irrelevant and only the cultural location matters. *** The Underground Railroad was termed in conjunction with the growing network of railroads, taking on nomenclature related to the industry, for example safehouses were “stations” and people who escorted runaway slaves were “conductors.” A mythology circulated at and among the plantations, codenames and secret messages were used
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a monument to freedom and identity
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The Underground Railroad to spread the word of the Underground Railroad and enable the escape of slaves who otherwise could not have made it to the North. Clandestine societies were created in northern cities, not only to fund the activities of the Underground Railroad, but also to support escaped slaves in settling into communities in the free states and to help them find jobs, providing them letters of recommendation. The process of integrating a free person into society was long,33 it required counteracting the effects of a systemically separated culture and joining into the wider American society. People were involved in the Underground Railroad for various reasons. Some believed slavery was an abomination and went against their religion. Some wanted equality for millions of slaves of African descent living in America. Some just wanted to help people escape something terrible they had experienced for themselves. In 1861, the inevitable social and economic divisions caused by slavery in the American south led to a civil war between the secessionist Confederate States of America and the United States. Slavery, as a legal institution for the subjugation of a race, would not come to an end in the US until the closing acts of the American Civil War when President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The states later ratified the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the US constitution which outlawed slavery, granted all citizens equal protection under the law, and extended the right to vote to all male citizens regardless of race, respectively. There still exists a romanticism for the antebellum south, as evidenced in the popular discourse relative to Confederate monuments. Cries of “the South will rise again!” still persist in an unironic manner in many communities. Interesting to note, this is not a cry of “the South will reinstitute the system of slavery!” although that may be implied in the actual statement. This shows a romanticized attitude toward the “Lost Cause” of the Confederacy and the demonstration of southern values romanticized in popular culture by way of films such as Gone with the Wind. The film itself, as with many Confederate monuments, slyly dodges the topic of slavery, though slavery was the central point of the Civil War. In my own upbringing in the American south, in my time in school history classes, I was taught by more than one teacher the reason for the Civil War. I recall exactly what two different teachers said. My seventh-grade history teacher said, “Whatever anyone else tells you, the Civil War was about states’ rights.” My tenth-grade history teacher said, “No matter what anyone else tells you, the Civil War was about slavery.” These are two antithetical and absolute statements. As an adolescent, this binary always troubled me a great deal due to their uncanny similarity and I struggled with what to believe. I’ve grown much more considerate in the intervening years and can give a clearer picture to myself of the reasons for the Civil War: the war was due to slavery, and the states’ rights defense was, and is, a sloppy attempt at asserting a moral justification for a war against liberty. This position is supported by a plethora of evidence such as: the Fugitive Slave Act, which curtailed states’ rights in favor of slavery at the behest of the Southern Cause; the constitution of the Confederate States, which identifies their position as being wholly in line with that of slavery; and the decades of racially motivated Jim Crow laws, riots, and lynchings targeted at black Americans to undermine their communities. However, such 33
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"The Underground Railroad", PBS
a monument to freedom and identity demonstrable facts will not change the minds of millions of Americans whose cultural identity is integrated with the “Southern Cause.” The Civil War absolutely defines the identity of the United States. Slavery absolutely defines the identity of the United States. These two things are integral to each other. However, slavery is not something which is prolifically monumentalized. War, on the other hand, is incredibly sublime. It is something easily romanticized and anesthetized, and it receives monuments because of this. “Lost Cause” historiographers have erected monuments to many of the Confederate military figures. The institution of slavery is present in the historical context of such monuments, but the atmosphere is heroic and the icon does not orient directly towards slavery. Lost Cause historiographers will never erect a monument directly referencing the institution of slavery because that is not the narrative they are wont to tell. Anyone who does wish to narrate the tale of slavery will struggle to build a monument, because slavery it not a romanticizable subject. In the New South, there are two competing, irreal worlds. In one world, the Lost Cause of the Confederacy advocates the waging of a just war against the restriction of the federal government and the preservation of states’ rights against the Northern aggressors. (I have heard the Civil War called “the war of Northern aggression” on many occasions and from many people.) In the other world, the army of the righteous destroyed the shackles of oppression in a bloody four-year war. Thus, one horror ends another horror. Both narratives have ample representation in American monuments. *** The monument proposed here is not interested in romanticizing cultural identity. Rather, it is a confrontation with exactly that. The thesis aims to forward understanding of our relationship to this history, attempting to reconcile worlds, and in doing so, form a new understanding of an array of worlds. Several elements of the Underground Railroad mythology that were useful in making both aesthetic and thematic determinations with regards to the individual buildings and the monument as a whole. The north star, Polaris, was a critical orienting element in most of the stations and the usage of the icon of constellations is apparent in each building. The concepts of movement and transit are also important thematic elements to recognize. The usage of Christian architectural iconography, especially of the Quakers who were instrumental in the development of the Underground Railroad. Using French philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s precession of simulacra as a basis of how to avoid hyperreality in monuments, this thesis arrives at a few conclusions which impact the design of monuments.34 Firstly, all monuments must have an orienting icon directing the viewer towards a particular moment, event, or person in history. This is the subject of the monument. The icon must represent something which fits Immanuel Kant’s definition of the sublime in that it expresses a monumental formless magnitude.35 This does not necessarily need to be a spatial magnitude; it is possible to use icons to represent an event with thematic magnitude. 34
Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 6
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The icon commands the respect of the audience and the viewer by its sublimity, which is critical to monuments meant to depict events which demand respect and remembrance. Secondly, all monuments should exude an atmosphere which projects an intended emotion, whatever it may be. A monument meant to represent an event which inspired terror in its victims should create an atmosphere of terror and fear. Likewise, a monument meant to represent an event which inspired hope in its contemporaries should create an atmosphere of hope and elation. Atmosphere is produced in architectural compositions using tectonic, spatial, and material elements, form, and the use of light. Atmosphere should engage the senses of sound, smell, touch, etc. Atmosphere is the wholistic effect of the building on its occupants. Thus, these elements balance with each other to create an effective monument. If either of these elements were missing, or one overpowers the other, then the monument would not serve as an adequate representation of history and would fall into the trap of becoming an aesthetician of history, which anaesthetizes events and strips them of true historical context. The icon cannot, however, be preserved as an exact copy of the referent. To do so would be to create a copy of a copy. Each of the proposed stations considers this question of the referent in different ways.
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Kant, Critique of Judgement, 107
The Plantation the nature of imposition
The Plantation
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the nature of imposition At first, one comes upon what seems like the garden of Eden. The fields are lush and verdant, supporting a variety of crops such as tobacco and alfalfa, but most of all, cotton. In these fields people are toiling not for themselves, but for the benefit of their owner. These people have no say in the matter. For many, it is the only life they have ever known. Some have married. Many have had children, though most have been sold away from their parents. These children will never experience the love their mothers felt for them. They will live their lives in the economic service of another and die beholden to them. Many slaves adopted Christianity at the command of their masters, nevertheless it became a source of strength and community. For most, this would be the only life they would ever know. But for more than one hundred thousand of them, the possibility of living in freedom was worth risking everything. And so there were whispers. Sayings in the quarters. “Follow the drinking gourd,” some said. “The old man is waiting,” said others. “Cross the river Jordan to Canaan.”
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Oaklawn Plantation House, Natchez, Louisiana Jackson Plantation House, Schriever, Louisiana
two early sketches of the Plantation portion of the monument
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triangular chamber with triangular opening
chamber interior looking up towards the upper level
The intention of the first station was to deconstruct the icon of the plantation house, the home of the slaves’ master. Many design decisions were made to reduce the typical southern colonial plantation house to its original influences by provoking its archetypal elements in ways counter to their original aesthetic intentions. The gable roof no longer sits atop the wall, but instead turns directly into it; the whole of the building is an extrusion. The iconic volume is penetrated by four triangular tapered shafts, each covered with parallel wooden floorboards as one might find in a house or on the deck of a ship. The series of four vertical chambers, tapered and open to the outside air, are connected to each other by winding circulation tunnels. The front façade has been pulled harshly from the main body of the building and the grand staircase - a central element of the plantation house - is coiled between the façade plane and the larger volume of the building. The interior is disorienting, oppressive, and bleak. Some shafts pool with water, while others have their floors angled up towards a rooftop aperture filtering stratified light through the intersecting floor slats. Light is like short gasps of air to a drowning man. The whole building is a massive and dark thing, intended to create a harsh imposition on the surrounding environment and on the visitor. It must be so when visually communicating the oppressive imposition of slavery. The building is composed of two floor levels – a grade level and an upper level roofscape. Architectural elements contribute to the imposing atmosphere of the station. The plan of the rooms and the connecting pathways fold and bend. The corridors connecting the chambers are inconsistent in width. The walls of black concrete have as little texture as possible. The interior is spatially disorienting due to the disorganization 32
Upper Level Plan
Grade Level Plan
of the layout. The chambers themselves are all scalene, triangular, prismatic voids with no concurrent sides. The lack of orienting elements on the interior walls and the height of the chambers which, when coupled with the slated floors overhead, create an acoustical layering which suppresses ambient sounds. In two chambers, the floor slopes down into a small pool. In the remaining two, the floor slopes up sharply. These chamber types alternate along the zigzagging path from the entrance to the exit. The upper level, which is reached either by the grand staircase at the front of the building or by an interior service staircase, is austere in its materiality. Platforms are formed above the interior chambers by spaced wooden floor slats. The same blackened concrete which makes up the entirety of the building mass forms a gabled roof covering the wood board flooring. The boards of the flooring allow light to permeate the interior in bands of long rays. The floor itself is frightening to walk across. Wood creaks when stressed by footfalls, and this is easily sensed by whoever is walking on the roof above, while the sound reverberates in the concrete chambers below. Unlike the interior ground level, where the chambers are connected by indirect halls, the upper level platforms are connected by a straight walkway positioned underneath the ridgeline of the façade outline. This creates a focusing, axial corridor along which the whole of the building may be perceived, establishing context for the severe environment and winding pathways in the ground level interior. The atmosphere is meant to embody the harshness of the institution the icon represents. The interior space is unmistakably unwelcoming. Juxtaposing vertical compression and release creates an uneasy agoraphobia within the chambers and a claustrophobia within the corridors, despite movement being restricted to a uniform plane. 33
the nature of imposition In deconstructing the icon of the plantation house, the architectural members typically determining the typology are laid bare. The first station stands in opposition to the institution of slavery. The bureaucracy of slavery and the lives of slave owners were hidden behind the beautiful and glorious architectural forms of the southern colonial mansion which itself was descended from the Palladian villa. The system of slavery is an ugly thing to associate with something as aesthetically pleasing as the Greek temple front or the gabled roof. Yet, these aesthetic elements that form the modern cultural image of slavery as it related to the aristocracy and so contributes to the aestheticization of the antebellum period. This association between the aesthetically beautiful and the antebellum period serves to anaesthetize and sanitize modern perceptions of history. The deconstruction of the aesthetic elements as a method toward understanding their form without creating a simulation of the exact same aesthetic elements deepens the understanding of history created by the monument without aestheticizing and romanticizing it.
Traditional elements of the iconic plantation “Big House” include the gable roof, Roman temple front portico with the occasional balcony, a symmetrical floor plan and layout, chimney’s and fireplaces, and grand central staircase.
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The Plantation
above: sectional drawing of the series of chambers right: view walking up the grand staircase at night
ideas of promenade and movement shaped this thesis, visible in this early concept drawing
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The chambers and passageways form harsh canyons. Each face in the mass is seemingly created by fracturing and deforming a perfect extrusion. The chambers and passageways are imperfections that cruelly modify the fragile form. Moving through the building is an exercise in compression and release. The narrow corridors that sharply turn through the intermediate spaces open into large chambers; the large chambers then compress the visitor back into the narrow passageways. The upper level is where the damage to the purity of the extrusion is most visible. Large triangular cuts are taken from the building with seemingly no order or regulation. This exposes the chambers and the visitors below to the elements of nature.
The Plantation
140'-0"
North Elevation
43'-0"
West Elevation
The front façade of the “plantation house” is pulled away from the central mass. The staircase directly behind it leads to the upper level, allowing one to bypass the grade level interior spaces. The viewing platforms on the upper level are directly above the chambers below. The roof over these spaces is removed, allowing visitors to see out over the walls to the landscape surrounding the building. The idea that the slave-owning aristocracy was tied to the land was a powerful one that contributed to the mindset of the south.
21'-6"
43'-0"
South Elevation
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East Elevation
the nature of imposition
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The Plantation
upper viewing platforms look out over the fields
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the nature of imposition
upper level walkway forms axial perspective
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The Plantation
Massive blank walls bind and smother, caving in around you. The structure starves and dictates all who stand within it. Winding tunnels made of darkness drive you to the light, but light is kept elusive out of grasp. With every step you listen to the steps of those above you, wincing with the cracking and the gnawing of the boards. The cool and placid air around you seems to sing of sadness at a never-ending silence and in the darkness lurks your greatest fears. Up above the light creeps down to brighten blackened corners but all it shows is heartbreak.
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The Chapel the formation of community
The Chapel
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the formation of community Pushing though the darkness into the light of salvation is no simple task. It requires a resilience of spirit and a consciousness of faith. Without faith that salvation is possible, who would brave the wilderness to seek it out? Following a star is surely the Christian way to salvation. A star guided the magi to Bethlehem. Also, a star guided ships to the new world, many of them carrying within them a multitude of slaves. It is fitting that this star should right the wrong and guide its children to salvation.
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The atmospheric influences on this station were selected to apply separately to the interior and exterior. Interior atmospheric influences were chosen for their aesthetic relationship to constellations and the night sky. Boullée's drawing and Corbusier's church in Firminy both use light to simulate the pointillist nature of constellations. The exterior is designed to create the mnemonic impressions of a rustic church or chapel. The decision was made early in the design process that the chapel should have a relationship to a hill or elevated landscape, either on top or on the brow. The hill and the "mountaintop" specifically have a strong relationship with biblical illusions to the Promised Land. Moses could see the Promised Land from the mountain, but could not enter it. This sentiment was echoed in the final speech of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
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Boulléé, Cenotaph for Isaac Newton, 1784 View of [African-American] church in thinly populated area Corbusier, Saint-Pierre, France, designed 1963
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The Chapel
meandering pathway leading to the chapel reflects the winding interior hallways of the plantation house station
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The second station in the monument’s series is a chapel which sits on the brow of a mild hill. The path which winds its way up the hill in a series of switchbacks is cast white concrete. It winds and meanders similarly to the winging interior corridors of the Plantation portion of the monument. The main Chapel building has two portions. The upper portion establishes a value upon light and aperture as a reflection of the night sky and the lower portion offers functional support, including space where services may be conducted. The lower portion is accessible through a corridor cut into its stone plinth. The upper portion, visible at a distance, acts as the building envelope and protects the interior from the elements. The enclosure is composed of a glass box with copper cladding on a steel frame with both structurally independent of each other. The copper cladding takes the form of strips, similar to the wood cladding of old churches and meetinghouses. Gaps between the ends of the strips create apertures which allow light to shine into the space below. This cupola-like element is rotated fifteen degrees counterclockwise from the lower portion, aligning with North. The lower level is nested into the side of the hill and covered in travertine tiles. In this design, the gabled roof makes its second appearance, but this time it is not an institution of oppression. It is an imposed institution, but it has grown beyond its imposition to become the binding of a new community. The transformation and adaptation of the icon reflects this. It is not a deconstruction, as the plantation house station. Instead, the Chapel station is a modification which celebrates and emphasizes the institute’s iconic house form. The roof of the chapel supports the copper gable on the plinth, oriented at an angle towards cardinal north. The apertures in the copper siding of the large cupola are analogous to the constellations by which the Underground Railroad found guidance.
the formation of community
layered partial section with plan diagram and elevation of the cupola
The design and shape of the building and site call back to the previous station in the series, the Plantation. The concepts and teachings of Christianity were introduced to the slaves by their owners, and the shape of the institution reects the shape of the institution of oppression, but this is not an inherently oppressive space. The organization of African churches in the south facilitated the Underground Railroad and aided escaping slaves. Ironically, the institutions created by slave owners facilitated the demolition of their economic system. Many churches and Quaker meetinghouses became safehouses for the Underground Railroad.
wall section with dierentiated interior and exterior surfaces
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The Chapel
North Elevation
40'-0"
40'-0"
West Elevation
30'-0"
South Elevation 50
East Elevation
the formation of community
Site Plan the Chapel, positioned on the brow of a hill, has a commanding and orienting presence
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The Chapel
the Chapel positioned on the brow of a hill in the mountain
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the formation of community
during the day, the light of the night sky is preserved in the interior of the space by the apertures creating points of light which are reflected in the glass
at night the relationship between the building and light is reversed
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The Chapel
The gentle breath of light begins to fog the glass and skylight pours down to heaven’s earthly home. The song this time is sad but sweet and sings of your salvation at the hands of no one but your own. A song lent strength and power by the multitude of voices whose resonance engulfs the holy space. Between the notes are silence as between the light is shadow but with this darkness comes no longer death. Its music comes and goes and ebbs and flows cloaking in its kindness all whose voices reach where light comes from.
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Isolation the foundation of identity in isolation
Isolation
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the foundation of identity in isolation The third station is about isolation and self-discovery in that isolation. What is it to be alone, truly alone, possibly for the first time in your life? How do you behave outside and separate from society and the many constraints, both overt and subtle, that it places on you? The function of this station is reflecting upon self-identity. What is it like to be placed in total and complete self-control and to learn what is it to be oneself? Society makes individuals sacrifice comforts or aspects of identity that exist in opposition to the agreed mean. We are only truly ourselves when we are alone. Isolation grants us freedom. The third station in the series is unique among its peers. This station is an architectural manifestation of isolation. The social and cultural isolation created by slavery is obvious, however there is a formation of identity in that isolation. There is trauma in abuse and in isolation and in societal disregard. But isolated from that culture of trauma, from the endless stimuli created by a civilization’s culture, there can be the formation of a new identity. This station focuses on the ascetic aspects of space. The architecture is comprised of a simple extruded square, made of translucent channel glass, and topped by a glass plane. It is a space of meditation and contemplation, where one has the opportunity to step away from society of their own volition.
alone together
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Isolation
1'-0" 9'-0"
2'-9" Plan
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3'-1 1/2"
the foundation of identity in isolation
9'-1"
23'-0"
Side Elevation
Front Elevation
Section
Orthographic Views
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Isolation
Atmospherically, the space indicates a lightness and a silence. This idea of solitude is manifested through the channel glass units as well as uniform and translucent elements. The sounds and chattering of the outside world are shut out at the door. The atmosphere facilitates introspection through the creation of a space which exists apart from the world, as well as all other spaces constituting the monument. There are three of these volumes positioned around the immediate site. None of them are at the same elevation as any of the others. Also, none share the same orientation relative to the cardinal directions. The aesthetic similarities relate to the functional similarity of isolation, however the speciďŹ c meaning of that isolation and its relationship to a visitor is unique to each unit in this station. As for the site itself, there is no order or promenade. The landscape is apart from the building. It would be as if three giant crystals sprouted from the ground in an otherwise untouched forest. This disconnection heightens the sensation of solitude and magniďŹ es the emotional aspect of being alone in a place with one's own thoughts and feelings. The implementation of a study of icon was a unique condition, the lack of a form which is culturally representative of identity indicates that emotional aspects must constitute the icon of identity. The theme of solitude is referenced in the size of the space and the singular seat placed in the center. The space is whole and complete – additions to or subtractions from the volume are impossible. This is the formal indication of the concept of the One. Using translucent channel glass, the vision of the visitor is directed upwards to the clear glass oculus that functions as the roof of the building. The solitude, as well as the focused view upward along the linear glass elements toward the clear, framed sky, gives the station an ethereal atmosphere.
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or the foundation of identity in isolation 31
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Since there is no architectural aesthetic element to serve as an icon of benign solitude, various works of art and architecture whose themes centered around the idea of contemplation acted as aesthetic referents. Casper David Freidrich's Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog creates an excellent visual understanding of singleness and ephemeral beauty. Freidrich orients the subject with his back to the viewer. This is because the central figure in the scene is not one with whom the viewer is meant to identify, but identify with. It is a scene about the introspection achievable with isolation in the presence of splendor. Peter Zumthor's Bruder Klaus Field Chapel channels this atmosphere of isolation into a work of architecture. The focusing effect of the linear pattern created on the interior face of the concrete orients the eye to the oculus above. This demonstrates a singleness of form and a unifying spatial extension toward infinity. It is these two ideas that form the basis of the design for the isolation station: introspection in nature and unity of space. Both relate to the ideas of solitude, oneness, and apartness. In this way, the primary design of this station is based around atmospheric and emotional aspects. The icon stems from these, rather than the inverse relationship in the previous two stations in which the icon, in some way, dictates the atmosphere, as well as the emotions that atmosphere conveys.
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Friedrich, Wanderer Above A Sea of Fog, 1818 Zumthor, Interior of Bruder Klaus Field Chapel, 2007 Zumthor. sectional drawing of Bruder Klaus Feild Chapel, 2007
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Isolation
Loneliness escapes you as the starlight comes to find you by yourself with nothing but your thoughts. In the cool of night and warmth of day while lacking all distractions comes a voice emboldened by the silence of the glass. A voice from the song, but now the song its singing is the one assigned by you. It’s a voice which lingered in the shadows and the silence of the chapel when the song was in dÊtente, frightening in its power and steadfast in its promise. It grows bolder by the second over you.
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The last four stations in the monument are the RIVER, COMMUNITY, HOUSE, and ORCHARD. The following section provides a diagrammatic summary of each station to explain how each one connects and contributes to the relationship between icon and emotion.
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The River The fourth station is the architectural exploration of a living icon. The iconography of Christian baptisms and the demarcation line between freedom and enslavement are demonstrated in the Ohio River, an important divide between slave states and free states. The river itself is an icon and refers to both the Christian imagery of baptism and the geographical imagery of the separation of the United States into slave states and free states. The river is the dividing line between two worlds: the world of enslavement and the world of liberation. Most slaves escaping on the underground railroad would need to cross the Ohio River, somehow. There are many ways to cross a river — swimming, boating, and wading are all options. An architectural solution is a bridge. A bridge connects and mediates the two worlds. In the case of this bridge, it also connects the literal world to the mythic world, the physical to the spiritual, and the past to the present. The difficulty in designing an iconic referent to a bridge is that any span between two points is defined, literally, as a bridge. The icon is the aesthetic subject. A literal depiction of the iconic subject risks subverting the meaning of the architecture with aestheticization. The solution is removing the span between the two points to connect them implicitly. The implication of connection using an aesthetic theme, along with the broader theme of crossing, creates the bridge. In this way, it is not a physical bridge, but a spiritual and emotional one.
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South Bank Plan
North Bank Plan
The river station's design is split in two parts. There is the south bank landing from which the visitor approaches (in the same way an escaping slave would approach), and the north bank landing. Both are connected aesthetically by the repetition of horizontally long concrete steps. The south bank landing uses the same channel glass as seen in the Isolation station (#3) which, here, directs the visitor to the water. The glass is positioned harshly to mimetically reference Friedrich's The Sea of Ice. The steps form a staircase leading to the river. From the water's edge, the visitor can see the north bank landing across the broad Ohio River. At this scale, one can understand the peril involved in a river crossing.
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Friedrich, The Sea of Ice, 18231824 Cruikshank, Eliza’s Escape, 1852 Bearden, Baptism, 1964 B&O Railroad Viaduct over the Ohio River, Benwood, West Virginia
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Longitudinal Section
"Enter into the Royal Exchange of London, a place more respectable than many courts, in which deputies from all nations assemble for the advantage of mankind. There the Jew, the Mahometan, and the Christian bargain with one another as if they were of the same religion, and bestow the name of infidel on bankrupts only. There the Presbyterian gives credit to the Anabaptist, and the votary of the establishment accepts the promise of the Quaker. On the separation of these free and pacific assemblies, some visit the synagogue, others repair to the tavern. Here one proceeds to baptize his son in a great tub, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; there another deprives his boy of a small portion of his foreskin, and mutters over the child some Hebrew words which he cannot understand; a third kind hasten to their chapels to wait for the inspiration of the Lord with their hats on; and all are content." Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary
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The Community
Slavery was an economic institution that grew to dominate society in the south. A society absent of slavery enables greater meritocratic economic opportunity, which fosters social equity throughout business, politics, and other institutions. But, in the world of escaped slaves, it is an unfamiliar and alien society. This station creates a community and market atmosphere freed from the burdensome imposition of slavery. It is a democratic space, with each bay and stall being given an equal section of courtyard space and facade space. However, simply because a person was no longer suffering under the yoke of slavery did not mean they found themselves in a society with which they were entirely familiar and comfortable. For many escaping slaves, the only community they knew was behind them. The fifth station creates a common space suitable for civic meetings or a local market. Pointed arches are arranged around a central courtyard space with each bay equal in size, creating a loggia that can be used as a bazaar or marketplace arcade. The flexibility of this space allows for the multitude of programs a community requires from its pubic gathering spaces. The loggia is composed of a repetition of tall lancet arches set around square bays. The arches are white concrete and the walls are black masonry units. This creates a clear contrast between the walls and the arches penetrating and supporting them. The floor is similarly contrasted between the white concrete and the black masonry. The central third of the loggia is open from both sides, creating the marking of a threshold, or a gate, to the plaza. The gate axis is perpendicular to the axis of the market. It indicates two communities intersecting and exchanging. These contrasting elements are used to create a delicate, ethereal atmosphere. The way in which elements interact structurally with each other, with the visually lighter concrete supporting the visually heavier masonry, creates an aesthetic tension that feeds the ethereal, yet strange, atmosphere. The floor pattern creates a sense of disorientation, serving the atmosphere of confusion and uncertainty.
plan diagram of intersecting axes and floor pattern creating a shifting, non-hierarchical forum 71
The House The sixth station explores the relationship between domestic and communal spaces and the idea of implied separation. The icon of the fireplace and hearth is invoked in this design. The upper element is architecturally similar to a chimney, with an interior space and an exterior facade extruded from a single flat shape. The platform parallels the hearth — a flat, hard surface. The house represents settlement, the ultimate goal of the Underground Railroad. This is not the harsh, black plantation house of the first station, though it shares some aesthetic similarities, such as the oculus. Being the house and home of freemen, the atmosphere aims to be relieving and welcoming. There are two planes of separation between the center of the structure and the surrounding land — the overhead plane created by the upper element, and the implied envelope created by the columns. The raised platform works in conjunction with the columns to define the building volume. In the same way the building invokes the architectural lexicon of the hearth, it utilizes the promenade of the porch. The plane at which occupants interact with the building is distinct from the plane on which the community operates. Stepping up to the building's foundation plane provides a distinction between being in a public environment and a private setting.
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Picasso, Mediterranean Landscape, 1953 Bearden, Piano Lesson, 1984 Burlow Plantation Ruins, Florida
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The Orchard Biblically, the first place humans inhabited was a garden, Eden. In this garden was a tree that provided sustenance and forbidden knowledge. The importance of trees is reflected in the mytheme of the sacred tree, a structural component in many myths in many disparate cultures. This mytheme is highly pervasive because of the importance of trees in human society. They provide food, shelter, and perform many functions in the life cycle of the environment. The ability to climb trees allowed early humans to escape ground predators and take shelter. Trees are linked indelibly to human life and culture. This station functions as an orchard, a shelter of life offering sustenance. Its layout creates a central oasis surrounded by seven tower-like structures. Each tower contains a tree growing from the exposed soil in the center. Each of these towers serves not only as the facilitator of life, but as a marker of life's existence and its eventual absence after death. Ideas of enclosure permeate the form of this station. A sense of shelter comes from being in an enclosed space. Enclosure creates rules of movement and procession within a space. This is important for instilling an atmosphere of order and peace. A tended garden is more inviting than a patch of wild brambles. Thus, enclosure is the cultivation of life through and within a system of instilled order.
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Phifer, Glenstone Museum, 2018 Friedrich, Chalk Cliffs on Rügen, 1818 Boecklin, Island of the Dead, 1883
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the roof of the building covered in grass, mirroring the landscape 77
Conclusion
The success of any monument is contingent on its emotional impact. Therefore, the relationship between iconic architectural referent and atmospheric elements must be considered carefully when designing a monument. Balancing these two elements enables a monument to create a space introspective of history and culture. Together, these seven stations (PLANTATION, CHAPEL, ISOLATION, RIVER, COMMUNITY, HOUSE, and ORCHARD) come together to form the monument to the Underground Railroad. No single structure could hope to depict the entirety of such a complex, far reaching, and enigmatic organization. This monument achieves representation of the network and its history though its geographic scale and architectural iconography. The mysterious nature of the monuments mirrors the mysterious and disorienting nature of the Underground Railroad, the ight from persecution, and the journey of self-discovery.
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