 | MEMORY AND MUSEOLOGY Denton Corker Marshall’s Anzac Hall hovers enigmatically in the shadow of the Australian War Memorial. Naomi Stead
explores the project and the tensions between museum and memorial.
Photography by John Gollings
| Review |
|
The rolling ground plane and complex curving forms of Anzac Hall, with the Australian War Memorial seen beyond.
|
The tapering concrete blade wall.
|
Sitting below the War Memorial
parapet, Anzac Hall is invisible from the land axis
of Anzac Parade.
|
The blade wall, designed to
provide a nuetral backdrop to the memorial, and
glazed bridge link.
|
Looking from the mezzanine, over the exhibition hall.
|
|
|
Given the symbolic potency of the Anzac legend, the Australian War Memorial has
long held a central place in mainstream Australian national identity. And regardless of
the problems inherent in so called “Digger nationalism”, and that mysterious
transmutation through which bloodshed and military defeat at Gallipoli came to be seen
as the birth of the nation, it would be a hard heart indeed that was unmoved by the
memorial’s formal commemorative spaces. The cloistered Honour Roll, with poppies
pressed between the bronze name plates, remains a profoundly sorrowful memorial to
wasted life. The domed Hall of Memory containing the tomb of the unknown soldier, the
outdoor pool of reflection, and the eternal flame are similarly sombre, funereal, and
quasi-religious in character.
Nevertheless it has always seemed rather anomalous that the Australian War
Memorial is called by that name. Since its opening in 1941 it has also functioned as a
specialist war museum, displaying the artefacts and presenting the history of Australia’s
involvement in international warfare. Balancing the roles of museum and memorial
produces certain tensions. A museum has a responsibility to present the evidence of
historical events in as accurate, objective, and comprehensive a fashion as possible,
whereas a memorial works at the level of affect, provoking empathy and insight through
emotional identification. With the completion of Denton Corker Marshall’s Anzac Hall
extension to the War Memorial in June 2001, the relationship between museum and
memorial has taken another form again.
At first glance, Anzac Hall appears to contrast with the existing war memorial
building in almost every respect. In its massing, materials and detailing, the extension
could hardly be further from the blocky monumentality of the original. The only explicit
link between the old and new buildings is a light glass and steel bridge at first floor
level, and it is thus possible to circumnavigate both the old and new buildings at ground
level. Upon closer examination, though, Anzac Hall also establishes a subtle geometrical
reference to the original building. This is most evident in the shape of the plan: a curved
trapezoid in which the angle of the outer walls radiates outward from the centrepoint of
the memorial’s dome. This radial pattern is also revealed inside the hall in the
orientation of the main I-beam support columns, and dictates the fan-like arrangement
of the roof structure. As such, the Anzac Hall addition relates to the original building at
the most literal level.
From the outside, Anzac Hall is an enigmatic object: there is no direct public
access from the exterior, and its mass is largely concealed beneath ground level. In
part, this low profile was a response to principles laid down by the National Capital
Authority, which not only dictated the position of the extension – behind the existing war
memorial – but also demanded that it remain invisible from the land axis of Anzac
Parade, which visually links the war memorial with Parliament House. The most
dominant architectural elements of Anzac Hall are thus a long blank concrete wall,
tapering to a dramatic blade at each end and intended to act as a neutral backdrop to
the memorial, and a wide expanse of complex curving roof. Little of its perimeter wall is
visible – it is sunken into a rolling ground-plane planted with native grasses, the gentle
curve of these earthworks echoed in a roof form which rises in a slow swell towards the
centre. For all these curves, though, in plan and in elevation, there is nothing organic
about Anzac Hall. Its dark metal roof and panelled walls mark it out from the
surrounding light eucalyptus bushland, and from the dun-grey stone and copper of the
war memorial, as something alien. Half submerged, crouched behind the existing war
memorial and camouflaged within the terrain, it has an aspect of stealthiness.
Anzac Hall’s palette of materials is sympathetic to its cargo of military metalwork –especially in its allusions to aircraft detailing. The roof plane tapers at the edge into a
distinctly wing-like, continuously curved rim. This enables the roof to be read
simultaneously as heavy and light – an enormous uninterrupted plane settled upon
a pedestal, but one which may swoop into flight again at any moment. Internally, the
wall cladding of the service “core” is shiny riveted aluminium, reminiscent of a World
War II bomber.
The hall is entered via the newly refurbished Bradbury Aircraft Hall; the visitor
passes along a narrow axial bridge and enters the hall centrally, on a mezzanine level.
The mezzanine accommodates services within its back wall, a cafe on the eastern side,
and an exhibition space on the west. From this level the vast space of the hall is
immediately laid out, and the visitor is able to survey the “large technology objects” arranged below. Suspended opposite the point of entry is the stern of one of the
memorial’s major drawcards – the Japanese midget submarine, which is dramatically
installed across the length of the space. The large scale multimedia presentations which
periodically occur around this submarine, recreating its entry into Sydney Harbour in
1942, can be observed directly from the mezzanine level, from a stand-alone viewing
platform accessible down a short ramp, or from bench seating at ground level.
The interior of Anzac Hall is immediately striking, not only for the sheer volume and
span of its vaulted space, but also its gloominess – it is remarkably dark, and in this it is
reminiscent of a classic “black box” theatre design. This impression is reinforced by the
“panoramic” curve of the back wall, which, even though it is painted a uniform dark
grey, suggests a cyclorama or stage backdrop. Tanks, trucks and planes are arrayed
within this cavernous, hangar-like interior, each picked out of the gloom in its own
dramatic pool of light. But given that the objects exhibited are not prototypes or models
but actual war remnants, it is eerie to see them neatly lined up, silenced and neutralised.
In fact, at times there seems a vaguely discomforting lack of gravitas. Given the quasireligious
rhetoric of much of the memorial – its objects are referred to as “relics” rather
than artefacts, for instance – the breezy references to “big things – hourly shows” at the
entry to Anzac Hall are jarring. In stark contrast with the tone of the memorial’s
commemorative area, the installation of Anzac Hall strikes one as being uncomfortably
like a bizarrely martial “motor show”.
Perhaps this is more fairly a comment on the exhibition design, or indeed the brief
itself, rather than the architecture. But the very neutrality of the building tends to imply a
certain mode of display, and bears again on the War Memorial’s overall balance between
the role of memorial and museum. In the original building, the shift between these
registers is reflected spatially, in the transition between formal commemorative spaces
and exhibition galleries. The passage between these is marked by a shift in tone,
whereby deep melancholy is gradually displaced by a kind of detached, mildly blokey
curiosity. Perhaps Anzac Hall forms the culmination of that trajectory, the point where the
memorial function definitively ends. Even given the fact that the addition is projected
from the dome of the original Hall of Memory, this sophisticated geometrical connection
is too abstract to draw a tangible link with the memorial’s central role, as a national
monument. There was an opportunity for Anzac Hall to make a comment upon, or even a
reconciliation between, the role of memorial and museum. Regardless of the building’s
fine qualities, however, it does not do this. The architecture has an understated industrial
elegance, but, crouching in the shadow of the War Memorial, it effectively ducks the
question of commemoration.
Naomi Stead is an associate lecturer in architectural theory, philosophy and cultural studies at the University of Technology, Sydney
|
| Project credits |
ANZAC Hall, Australian War Memorial
Architect Denton Corker Marshall. Acoustic
Consultants Eric Taylor Acoustics. Structural, Traffic
and Civil Engineers Taylor Thomson Whitting.
Services Engineers Norman Disney Young.
Hydraulics and Fire Protection Consultants Hughes
Trueman Reinhold. Building Surveyors Fire Safety
Science. Cost Planners/Quantity Surveyors Donald
Cant Watts Corke (ACT). Project Manager Root
Projects Australia. Contractor John Hindmarsh ACT.
Client Australian War Memorial.
|
|
