“[The confederate monuments] are a gash in our civic fabric and they need to be either drastically contextualized or relocated...these are powerful objects that need powerful recontextualization.” (Louis Nelson, Professor of architectural history and associate dean in the school of architecture at the University of Virginia).
There are currently 1500 confederate memorials scattered across the United States—750 of which are physical monuments. The monuments are solid and heavy, carved from stone, rarely encouraging interaction and designed to instill fear in minority populations. They resurrect traumatic singular and collective memories.
The primary discussion surrounding these monuments is “should they stay or should they go?” However, to counteract the racism embedded in our society requires more work than this narrow question implies.
While Lewis Mumford proclaimed ‘The Death of the Monument,’ declaring it “a symbol of society’s fixation on death,” philosopher Adrian Parr, argues that “contemporary memorial culture has the power to put traumatic memory to work in a positive way.” Taking Parr’s statement about work literally and combining it with the idea that the stay-or-go question leads to oversimplification, this thesis will revolve around the design of mechanical counter monuments which, powered by the interaction of visitors, will slowly deface, deteriorate, deconstruct, and eventually destroy the legibility of the original confederate monuments. The machining structures will produce a cathartic experience resistant to the history and collective memory of the site—while breaking down and subverting the power structure put in place by the regime who erected the monument.
ERODING THE CONFEDERACY
Breaking down Confederate Monuments with Human-powered machines
ERODING
Breaking
“[The confederate monuments] are a gash in our civic fabric and they need to be either drastically contextualized or relocated...these are powerful objects that need powerful recontextualization.” (Louis Nelson, Professor of architectural history and associate dean in the school of architecture at the University of Virginia).
There are currently 1500 confederate memorials scattered across the United States—750 of which are physical monuments. The monuments are solid and heavy, carved from stone, rarely encouraging interaction and designed to instill fear in minority populations. They resurrect traumatic singular and collective memories. The primary discussion surrounding these monuments is “should they stay or should they go?” However, to counteract the racism embedded in our society requires more work than this narrow question implies. While Lewis Mumford proclaimed ‘The Death of the Monument,’ declaring it “a symbol of society’s fixation on death,” philosopher Adrian Parr, argues that “contemporary memorial culture has the power to put traumatic memory to work in a positive way.” Taking Parr’s statement about work literally and combining it with the idea that the stay-or-go question leads to oversimplification, this thesis will revolve around the design of mechanical counter monuments which, powered by the interaction of visitors, will slowly deface, deteriorate, deconstruct, and eventually destroy the legibility of the original confederate monuments. The machining structures will produce cathartic experience resistant to the history and collective memory of the site—while breaking down and subverting the power structure put in place by the regime who erected the monument.
Eroding the Confederacy: Revealing + Dismantling White Supremacy on Richmond’s Monument Ave.
In 2018, there were over 1500 Confederate monuments scattered across the United States. The majority of these monuments were dedicated during the postreconstruction Jim Crow Era—a period defined by Southern white-supremacist rule and terrorism against African Americans. They worked to perpetuate the “Lost Cause” myth of the Confederacy in Southern culture and “history” books.
This thesis attempts to A) catalog methods of architectural intervention, designed to deconstruct the intended power of the mass-produced monuments and, B) apply these methods—in combination with urban planning and landscaping strategies—to Richmond’s Monument Avenue, revealing the structures of racism and white supremacy embedded in the wealth of Monument Ave and Richmond as a whole.
Still in 2023, there remain over 1000 Confederate monuments and much work to be done, even beyond their removal. For example, Monument Avenue in Richmond, the site for this project, is still overwhelmingly white, and the removal of the offensive monuments is only a first step in drawing attention to the site’s racist, white supremacist past.
[Awarded the Richmond Harold Shreve Thesis Prize. Advisors: Val Warke, Sasa Zivkovic]
(above) Perspective Drawing of intervention at Davis Monument in Richmond, VA.
L I T T L E S / C I S T E R ( N ): Reuse Italy Competition Piscina Mirabilis, Naples
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” -Charles
Caleb ColtonLittle S/Cister(n) revitalizes the architectural origins of Piscina Mirabilis— bringing water to the depths of the 1st century “wondrous pool” through a system of vaulted piping, that imitates the program and the arcades of its idol, the older s/cister(n). The lightweight framework of pipes and grated platforms piggy-backs on the existing structure, spanning across the vaults to exhibit art works that hover above the cistern’s landscape of concrete, water, shadow and light.
The thin structural framework of the Little S/Cister(n) hangs bridges of circulation for people to view the space at new heights, and stages performance, projection and installations against the backdrop of the concrete arcades—allowing the work to become a part of the sensory experience of the museum. With this design, we challenge featured artists to test the limits of contemporary art—asking them to work in direct dialogue with the architecture to create a new canon of sculpture, performance and visual practices that are enhanced and tested by their exposure to natural light, moisture and seasonal shifts.
The roof has been preserved at the north-east and south-west corner, referencing the large program areas that sit below, while the rest of the original roofing has been removed and replaced with a grated metal floor that reveals the vaulted structure below. Large oculi that again reference the proportions of the arcades, span the central East-West axis of the roof---in the same location as the previously eroded openings. The structural piping that supports all of the exhibition and circulation platforms within Piscina Mirabilis is counter-balanced by arches that reach upward to the roof, extending the sectional landscape above ground. This piping circulates water from the roof to the lower level of the cistern, where new channels have been carved into the concrete floor.
ARCHITECTURES AGAINST FASCISM
An Architectural Investigation to Uncover and Counter Italy’s Fascist Monuments
ARCHITECTURES AGAINST FASCISM
Project Summary:
As an architectural type, a monument can seem small and insignificant, but almost without fail, each monument represents an intricate network of power, propaganda, money and political ambition. Because they are built on public ground, the investigation into the erection of a monument often uncovers a trail of decisions regarding funding, placement, representation, and the politics of space.
This project proposal builds on research and drawings produced for my M. Arch thesis ‘Eroding the Confederacy,’ as well as ideas developed for a 2022 elective course at Penn State’s School of Architecture titled ‘Monumental Manifestos.’ I am proposing to travel to sites in Italy which will support a long-term research project broken into 3 parts: 1) the development of an online catalog that indexes physical symbols of Italian Fascism 2) Indepth analysis of specific chosen sites, and 3) Development of speculative drawings to illustrate methods of architectural intervention that engage in dialogue with monuments on selected sites.
“We dream about the Roman Italy, that is, the wise and strong, disciplined and imperial Italy. Much of what was the immortal spirit of Rome is reborn in fascism: the lictor is Roman, our organization of combat is Roman, our pride and our courage are Roman: ‘Civis romanus sum’.” -Benito Mussolini, April 21, 1922 1
“Mussolini used architecture as one of his main propaganda tools, erecting monuments and apartment complexes at a pace never seen before in Italy…The desire to sweep the horror of the regime under the carpet has opened the country to revisionism and indifference. And in spite of a law which criminalizes reviving the Fascist Party, attempts at whitewashing the country’s history are treated with surprising tolerance.”
Ilaria Maria Sala
Historical and Contemporary Context:
In her 2017 New Yorker article titled “Why Are So Many Fascist Monuments Still Standing in Italy?” Ruth Ben-Ghiat writes of Rome’s Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana (the “Square Colosseum”), “The building is...a relic of abhorrent Fascist aggression. Yet, far from being shunned, it is celebrated in Italy as a modernist icon.” 2
The question asked in the title of Ben-Ghiat’s article, is one that I have been trying to answer since my first visit to Rome in January 2020, and one that I would like to continue to tackle as part of the following proposed research trip. How is it that more than 40,000 people were killed in Italian concentration camps, both in North
4
ARCHITECTURES AGAINST FASCISM
Africa and in Italy, during WWII, but a towering obelisk bearing the inscription “Mussolini Dux” still stands in Italy’s capital city? How is it that the Balbo Monument in Chicago has been viewed as highly controversial because of its mere connection to Mussolini and Fascist Italy, but Italy’s own monuments to Fascism have yet to be seriously questioned?
In an era when countries all over the world are confronting their colonialist and racist histories (and the monuments associated with these histories) how is it that the discussion remains largely silent with regard to Italy’s history of brutal violence and racism in North Africa, as well as within its own borders? Monuments to Italian Fascism cannot simply be compared to the Confederate monuments in the US or colonialist monuments in other parts of the world–they occupy a different political and historical context. However, Mussolini unquestionably executed a political agenda based on imperial and colonialist ambitions intertwined with racism. Amidst silence and acceptance of public monuments and symbols such as the Dux Obelisk (protected under Italian law after fifty years), political parties like The League, Forza Nuova, CasaPound, and The Brothers of Italy, have encouraged the re-emergence of extremist violence, harassment and xenophobia. In this context, ambivalence towards symbols of fascism should be cause for concern. Put simply by journalist Steve Rushton, “Normalizing fascism is a global crisis.” 3
While there have been several isolated examples of attempts to address artifacts of the former fascist regime (specifically east of Rome in Affile, in the Northern city of Bolzano, and in a 2019 conference at the American Academy in Rome titled “A Difficult Heritage: The Afterlife of Fascist-Era Architecture, Monuments, and Works of Art in Italy” 4 which invited a handful of guest speakers from different disciplines to try to ignite a dialogue on the topic), still today there has been relatively little discussion of removal or even recontextualization. Ben-Ghiat offers one explanation to the question posed by her article: the possibility of desensitization by the vast proliferation of fascist propaganda. She writes, “It was easy to feel, as Italo Calvino did, that Fascism had colonized Italy’s public realm. ‘I spent the first twenty years of my life with Mussolini’s face always in view,’ the writer [Calvino] recalled” (an idea also addressed in many of Antonio Gramsci’s writings on hegemony). Italian Fascism is not only kept alive in the form of public monuments. Following WWII, a complex web of deception was woven in order to paint Italy as a victim of the Germans. Many Fascist leaders wanted for war crimes were employed by the new government in an attempt to appease citizens who still supported Mussolini and the fascist regime. Even the Italian Penal Code (still
ARCHITECTURES AGAINST FASCISM
in use today) was written under fascism. Another explanation posed by the historian Filippo Focardi (author of Il Cattivo Tedesco e Il Bravo Italiano–“The Bad German and the Good Italian”) is the fact that Italy had no prominent writers or figures voicing opposition to their country’s colonial crimes.
Focardi writes, “The French public might not have agreed with the position of Sartre or Fanon, but they knew who they were.” 5 This position is echoed by Krystyna Clara Von Henneberg in an article titled “Monuments, Public Space, and the Memory of Empire in Modern Italy.” She writes “There was no Indian or Algerian crisis or catharsis for Italy—no Gandhi, Fanon or even Sartre or Campus to inspire or inflame public opinion on the question of Italy’s moral and international responsibility.” 6
For all of these reasons (and more that cannot concisely be elaborated on here), Italy’s fascist-era public monuments and artifacts, present a multitude of unique case-studies for investigating the potential of architectural intervention to initiate a conversation surrounding political monuments and sites of multi-layered memory. This project will explore how architecture can recontextualize these artifacts and more specifically engage in an overdue dialogue that challenges a historical narrative propped up by hegemony and infused with decades of propaganda.
Process:
The proposed project will begin with a continuation of in-depth historical research, conducted before, and during travel. This research will be represented in the production of a comprehensive online (public) catalog indexing remaining physical symbols of fascism in Italy. Subsequently, during travel I will document a selection of sites that represent various typological examples of these symbols. Documentation will include photography, film, analysis drawings and speculative design ideas for architectural methods of intervention that a) respond to Italy’s complex history and identity of place, and b) open a dialogue about the danger of ambivalence toward these sites, the powerful memories embedded in them, and their potential for recontextualization. The final phase will be the production of a series of drawings that synthesize research and analysis, and illustrate the methods of intervention for each chosen site.
Conclusion
The ancient Romans inspired centuries of rulers and regimes in monument building, but they also famously tore down and reappropriated monuments ( Damnatio memoriae, spolia ) at the end of a regime or transition to a new Emperor. Then there is the
5 As Europe Reckons With Racism, Italy Still Won’t Confront Its Colonial Past, foreignpolicy.com July 2020
6 Monuments, Public Space, and the Memory of Empire in Modern Italy, History & Memory, Volume 16, Number 1, Indiana University Press, 2004
ARCHITECTURES AGAINST FASCISM
history of the Italian Futurists who published polemical manifestos declaring that each new generation should have the right to a tabula rasa–that cultural institutions should be destroyed and rebuilt by each generation. Why is it then, that Italy has been so hesitant to touch—even dialectically—the physical remnants of fascism? With the global rise of far-right political groups and authoritarian-leaning politicians (most recently, the election of the leader of the Brothers of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, to Italian Prime Minister). now is a critical time to address the legacy of such symbols and their meaning to current far-right and nationalist groups.
Although the Romans set precedent for tearing down and repurposing monuments, and Mussolini himself bulldozed ancient Roman ruins and fortification walls to create his “third Rome,” there is a more recent discomfort in the idea of touching anything deemed ‘historic’. It is thought that when the Fascists left a note in Latin under the Dux obelisk in Rome, they were actually planning for its eventual toppling. What they didn’t foresee is that while fascism did fall, the monuments were largely left intact, and are now even protected. As evidenced by the 2019 conference on the topic at the American Academy in Rome, the prevalence of fascist architecture and the memory of Mussolini that persists in Italy’s built environment, demands the creative attention of architects, designers, artists and thinkers. How can we not only recognize these artifacts as potent symbols of the fascist regime, but question them, broaden our understanding of their relationship to political and economic history, collective memory, and identity of place, and attempt in creative ways to reinterpret their existence in the urban fabric and their marking of public space?
In a recently published short essay included in the Canadian Centre for Architecture’s Collection A Section of Now: Social Norms and Rituals as Sites for Architectural Intervention , architect Mario Gooden draws a connection between Italian Fascism and the global reckoning with controversial monuments and memorials. He proposes a sort of heterotopic purgatory for these monuments, housed in Giuseppe Terragni’s Danteum (supported by Mussolini for Rome’s 1942 World Expo). Employing Fred Koetter’s ‘Notes on the In-Between,’ Gooden writes, “perhaps Terragni’s design is the site for the contemplation of disputed monuments and memorials–a space of the in-between and ‘the realm of conscious and unconscious speculation and questioning–the zone where things concrete and ideas are intermingled, taken apart and reassembled–where memory, values and intentions collide.” 7 How architecture can create and hold space for the continuous questioning of monuments and statues that occupy sites in the public realm, continues to be at the forefront of my mind and I hope to further develop a growing body of possible answers to that question through this proposed research and investigation.
ARCHITECTURES AGAINST FASCISM
Travel Itinerary (to be undertaken June, 2023):
Sites in Rome (3 days):
Possible archive visits:
-Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Istituto Luce, Archivi di EUR SpA, Archivio Fotografico Del Debbio, Monument Documentation:
-Mussolini’s Dux Obelisk, Foro Italico, (Previously Foro Mussolini), Stadio Olimpico
-Square Colosseum (Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana) as well as other buildings in EUR
-Marconi Obelisk
-Villa Torlonia
Sites in Northern Italy (Total 7 days):
Milan:
-Terragni’s Monument to the fallen and Casa del Fascio, Lake Como
- Shoah Memorial of Milan
- Maurizio Catelan, Milan
Bolzano:
- Victory Monument and museum
- Casa del Fascio
Redipuglia:
- Ossuary in South Tyrol (“In the provinces that were recently annexed by Italy, like South Tyrol, the monuments also functioned as a silent mark of the new border. However, it is today known that the Ossuaries were mainly used for Fascist propaganda.” 8 )
-Ossuary at Redipuglia
Bologna:
- Monument to Fallen Partisans (Anti-fascist resistance fighters)
- Holocaust Memorial, SET Architects
Predappio:
- Mussolini’s Tomb
- Outdoor fascist architecture “museum”
- Casa del Fascio (slated to be Museum of Fascism)
Towns South/East of Rome (2 days):
- Affile: monument to Rodolfo Graziani, erected in 2012
- Mussolini-built towns of Latina (Littoria) and Sabaudia
Department of Architecture
The Stuckeman School_ The Pennsylvania State University
ARCH 131 Basic Design Studio I
Tess Clancy | tjc6406@psu.edu
CONCEPTUAL MODELING: STRUCTURED PLAY ASSIGNMENT 2B
In a sense, the role of a designer can be seen as something like structured play . Although a design problem may be very serious, you are always given certain parameters and asked to come up with creative solutions within those parameters. The ability to limit self judgment and follow your curiosity during the design process is an important skill to develop as an architect, or any creative producer. To embrace the feeling of not yet knowing the answer, and to be able to test ideas, as a child would, through making, drawing, sketching— playing— is an invaluable and productive method of approaching a design problem .
Using what you have learned about your primary school, and what you have hypothesized about the operations that generated its design, develop a three dimensional game/toy/operational model that describes or illustrates the different steps of the design hypothesized in assignment 3A. Although this should be a scaleless, conceptual model, consider the scale of a game. What size does it need to be in order to be playable Your game should be operative and dynamic, producing a variety of results, but structured in such a way that the various results share spatial characteristics apparent in your precedent school. In your model, these characteristics might show up in different orientations and different scales in order to result in a variety of solutions. In this process, attempt to tap into your childhood brain—the curiosity and willingness to experiment that comes from a complete lack of self judgment. Test each of your ideas visually.
DUE FRIDAY 10/21 (small group crits):
(A) Revision of generative operation diagrams
(B) Minimum of 3 proposals/iterations for game model, in sketch and sketch model format
DUE WEDNESDAY 10/26 (informal review_2:30PM)
(A) Final iteration of game concept model
DESIGN: PLAY STRUCTURES
ASSIGNMENT 2D
Using the generative operations you have hypothesized and developed in the first two exercises as well as the various results of your game model and drawings, design a play structure/playground specifically for your precedent school. How can you come up with a design solution that belongs uniquely to your school and its site? Where would it be located in relation to the school building? Does it open itself to the neighorhood or is it completely enclosed? What are the defining formal characteristics that reference your original precedent school and operation diagrams? How are the proportions related to the original grid upon which your precedent school was built? How is the playstructure dynamic both in plan and in section? What is above ground, what’s below ground? How does it relate to the site/landscape? Think outside of the box in terms of what you imagine when you think of a typical playground. Creativity will be valued over practicality.
DUE MONDAY 11/03 (ALL SECTION PIN-UP 2:30PM)
(A) Playground research: pin-up 4 precedents that you can talk about (you can use the library for books, databases, etc. and some additional sources will be sent through email)
(B) Sketches over site plan of original precedent school, showing 2 possible locations for your playground/play structures/playscape.
(C) Sketch models representing design ideas for play structure(s) (these can be scaleless but must demonstrate an exploration of different materials, minimum 3 materials outside of cardboard/chipboard/taskboard ). Note the difference between architectural materials and craft materials. If experimenting with craft materials, they should be used in an architectural way.
Bryan-Wilson
