Stelae!
The opening ceremony of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, Germany is being held today, open to the public two days later.
Peter Eisenman's competition-winning design features a gridded field of approximately 2,700 concrete slabs (stelae - a usually carved or inscribed stone slab or pillar used for commemorative purposes) of varying height and an Information Center underneath. The design was approved in June 1999, almost six long years before its opening.
According to Eisenman,
Image found here (via Gravestmor).
Grounded in the Maya Lin School of Memorial Design, Eisenman's non-representational design opts for mood over symbolism, striving to impress emotions on the visitor. The difficulty - and popularity - of this method is apparent in the WTC Memorial and other memorials designed since Lin's Vietnam Memorial in D.C., completed over twenty years ago. I like to separate Lin's "School" into two camps: the object and the field camps. Clearly, the Memorial in Berlin falls into the latter, where emotion is derived from the overwhelming number of stelae (similar to many WTC entries that used a large quantity of candles, trees, etc., to achieve the same end) and the visitor's movement across the field. Here that movement is affected by the varying heights of the slabs, at one moment low enough to act as a bench, at other moments towering over the visitor. The combination of regular grid and irregular, undulating tops is an effective combination; one can imagine the endlessly-different routes and sensations as one moves through the grid, glimpsing Berlin's modern context just beyond the memorial's edges.
But ultimately, like Lin's memorial in D.C., Eisenman's memorial must be experienced to be fully appreciated. Only then can one say if it is an effective memorial to the Holocaust and not (also) something else, arising from its abstraction and its concomitant ambiguity.
Update 05.16: Nancy Levinson at Pixel Points weighs in on the memorial design, with her always intelligent criticism as well as some fascinating alternatives proposed for the site.
Peter Eisenman's competition-winning design features a gridded field of approximately 2,700 concrete slabs (stelae - a usually carved or inscribed stone slab or pillar used for commemorative purposes) of varying height and an Information Center underneath. The design was approved in June 1999, almost six long years before its opening.
According to Eisenman,
The enormity and scale of the horror of the Holocaust is such that any attempt to represent it by traditional means is inevitably inadequate ... Our memorial attempts to present a new idea of memory as distinct from nostalgia ... We can only know the past today through a manifestation in the present.In the past couple days, much has been written about the design, either praising or criticizing its abstraction and its author.
Image found here (via Gravestmor).
Grounded in the Maya Lin School of Memorial Design, Eisenman's non-representational design opts for mood over symbolism, striving to impress emotions on the visitor. The difficulty - and popularity - of this method is apparent in the WTC Memorial and other memorials designed since Lin's Vietnam Memorial in D.C., completed over twenty years ago. I like to separate Lin's "School" into two camps: the object and the field camps. Clearly, the Memorial in Berlin falls into the latter, where emotion is derived from the overwhelming number of stelae (similar to many WTC entries that used a large quantity of candles, trees, etc., to achieve the same end) and the visitor's movement across the field. Here that movement is affected by the varying heights of the slabs, at one moment low enough to act as a bench, at other moments towering over the visitor. The combination of regular grid and irregular, undulating tops is an effective combination; one can imagine the endlessly-different routes and sensations as one moves through the grid, glimpsing Berlin's modern context just beyond the memorial's edges.
But ultimately, like Lin's memorial in D.C., Eisenman's memorial must be experienced to be fully appreciated. Only then can one say if it is an effective memorial to the Holocaust and not (also) something else, arising from its abstraction and its concomitant ambiguity.
Update 05.16: Nancy Levinson at Pixel Points weighs in on the memorial design, with her always intelligent criticism as well as some fascinating alternatives proposed for the site.
I'm here. In Berlin. Spent 5 hours at the Memorial yesterday. It's wonderful - because it's the only place in Berlin where I did NOT think of the Holocaust. The problem is not that it is abstract, the problem is that it is post-Modern. If you must pick a "style" rather than "timeless" - post-Modern equivocation is certainly the wrong style. I doubt the souls of the six million are post-Modern, bless them.
ReplyDeleteAnd the field is not large enough! You never get lost in it, you always see an out. Part of the power of Libeskind's Holocaust Tower here is that when the door closes behind you, you feel trapped.
And, because of the protective coating, Eisenman's concrete is too slick. The coating takes away its coldness and its power. The smooth concrete, with its finely done corners does not feel cold, rough, or deathly sad.
This feels very much like a 1990's expression of the Memory of the Holocaust.
If the 5.5-acre field isn't big enough, perhaps using a grid with curved lines - rather than straight lines where the end opening is visible - would have helped. It's not beyond Eisenman to employ curves, diagonals, and the like. I can imagine that this memorial falters when compared to Libeskind's museum. But perhaps the same feeling doesn't need to be conveyed in this memorial?
ReplyDeletePhotos have conveyed slightly what you say about the coating. A Scarpa-esque roughness would have been nice - maybe that'll happen over time.
Thanks for the first-hand account.
A grid with curved lines is a good idea! Then you wouldn't see the way out.
ReplyDeleteI went back to Libeskind's Jewish Museum today to compare his project to Eisenman's. Libeskind's "Garden of Exiles" viscerally does what Eisenman says he wants his memorial to do. At the "Garden of Exiles" you feel alone. You feel nauseous. You feel consumed. The trees above you make you feel you're in a topsy-turvy world. Because the ground is on an incline, when you think you're at an edge where you might escape, you are dragged back down into the discombobulation.
I've seen it many times and it remains powerful.
Plus Moshe Safdie gave a fine lecture at the Jewish Museum tonight. One highlight was when he said "sustainability" should not be a separate aspect of architecture. He said he has long considered it
an integral part of what he does.
Yes, please go and experience it - that is the point of memorials, the experience and not the picture of that experience, which is where architects and designers can get in trouble.
ReplyDeleteThe example of Maya Lin's design is that it reflects a large volume of people coming to a memorial, and for a difficult US subject. And that is the point of memorials addressing these larger themes pertaining to wars - it is difficult, and it is for an experience of a public, not one person or two. And so the work is not the sculptural form but how should the theme and public be addressed, what is considered in that as experience, etc...
What is here in Berlin is a memorial as photo op at best. It works if we are considering the world of Versailles and controlled park walks and behavior, but not in the Berlin site and its very actual world of tourism.
Just watch as I have, the huge amount and range from tourists to berlin punks jumping on top of the human body scale, coffin-like forms, in order to get a view, take pics, yell and wave to each other, sit and drink their can of juice or water, eat etc..and in general, especially the younger kids, show a common behavior that reads they have no idea as to why they are there. The BEHAVIOR is part of the memorial - it indicates just how the memorial conveys a specific message, or as in this case, not.
The architect wants now to convince, that it is about "life" there. But that is just an easy out for no plan but a sculpture. Liebeskind also understood to convey a concept of life that grows from such an epic tragedy. But that doesnt mean the lowest common dominator of tourist culture is the prevailing measure. "LIFE" is included in each good memorial design, of course, past and future through living present. This here in Berlin is just lazy. As a tourist playground, it would never pass any real codes - badly designed with way too many sharp corners, and if damp quite slippery. As memorial, it is too sculptural, no sense of pathos, ethos or just history, except when one sees it as a picture for the architects next book, or one goes BELOW to learn the text, as if "how to read the sculpture as a memorial".
The whole point is that the value of rememberance for such an incredible human tragedy, is so necessary it was given an area in this city, and at this most conspicuos site next to the Brandenberg Gate.
This commemorates not a war, but something much more difficult, a complex statement of our society, the need to recall so as not to forget and repeat mistakes, and the fact the everyday person can find within them to act in such utter evil.
What is there instead, is a typical Eisenman - speaks of theory, looks good in pics or CAD etc..drawings and renders. But rarely is he realized. When so, it has no connection to actual society, people, and values therein.
It is a memorial by committee, shades of WTC to come, that is minimal, sculptural and formalist, offending no one.
One should recall that in Germany, there were after the war, lengthy debates from many fields, if it was possible - or correct - to actually believe in trying to represent the extreme horror of the holocaust.
The idea that if the field were just a bit bigger, one would get that sense of dislocation which Eisenman wants...is not true. Don't mistake size for scale, which is what matters. Israel is not so different in size to the state of Rhode Island, but that never stopped it as a force in US global policy did it?
The more interesting authors worked during the early decades to consider how to grapple with the larger issue of the horror that is evident possible within the average human. So the fight was REPRESENTATION itself, not just a genre of abstraction or naturalism, etc.. but what can, or should, be represented in terms of the holocaust, such that it isnt made into some bourgeois cathartic (yet voyeuristic) horror-show only (like a play that is melodrama in nature, recreating as a scene the gassing of the jewish prisoners). It should reveal in our present, something about society itself, that we are responsible to not forget, and to consider why we need to always be watchful.
Memorials are about a shared "civitas", about society and its citizens, not tourists. IF they aren't about our lives and responsibilities refracted through an occurence that should be recalled - then what? to be turned into a part of tourist life as if that is good "normalization" process..? or good rememberance?
If one saw the open competition for the memorial years ago, there were some runner-ups of interest, before the whole thing was scrapped and then a new competition came with Eisenmann already on board. One of the designs was to turn the place into a well-designed public bus departure and arrival area, where buses run back and forth and take the public to view the concentration camps, and to understand as well the proximity of the sites to the city, etc.. that was at least beginning with the experience of the transporting of groups from one comfortable place, the city, to the real dislocation, the end stations of these very real, actual, non-symbolic, camps.
This memorial that stands now, is a throwback to old-fashioned architects who dont want to admit the sculptural is not necessary, there is no need for more space, but more understanding of the issue that is being memorialized, rather than memorializing their style.
So sure, please come and experience, and then compare to the way people react - the behavior - within Maya Lins memorial, the sense of personal grief, how the sense of private, and personal is allowed in the public space, to this Berlin monuments behavior of the tourist yahoos who try to jump across as many of these black coffins as they can, eat, take pictures with them, etc... and have no real idea whats it about.
And consider when the WTC memorial is underway, with its "healing" area of minimal style again...
Edward and anon - Thanks for your comments.
ReplyDeleteIt reminds me of the travelling Vietnam Wall that I saw in a cemetery on the north side of Chicago a few years ago. I happened upon it when my girlfriend and I were riding our bikes in the area, taking a look at it both for the absurdity of the idea and the fact neither of us had been to the real one in D.C. But even without visiting the original, the replica's effect could not compare. The atmosphere at and around the miniaturized wall (1/2 scale, perhaps) was more light-hearted than reverential or respectful. People could pick a name and then try to find that name, as in the orginal, but they approached the wall with curiosity and even a sense of adventure but with little awe or wonder. I was distracted by the cheap materials and lack of a back. Painted wood, if I recall correctly, is no match for polished granite.
The fact an Information Center is a part of the memorial defintely speaks to a an anticipation of people not "getting it". And a picture on NPR's web page of a youth jumping from one slab to the next reiterates this concern. But it's early and I'm not apt to dismiss it so soon.
Anon - A comment by a local in the NPR story linked above speaks about the memorial's "audience". He says that the memorial is for Germany not for the victims, then feeling some shame for being German. While that may be extreme, it points to who should understand its intentions, tourists or locals? Maybe living with the field of stelae in their backyard, Berliners - and other Germans - will instill that meaning upon it that the design might not successfully achieve.
"...the memorial's "audience".... He says that the memorial is for Germany not for the victims... While that may be extreme, it points to who should understand its intentions, tourists or locals?"
ReplyDeleteAre we talking about "us" and "them" again?