 | RADAREVENT ON MONUMENTALITY
JUSTINE CLARK REFLECTS ON LAST YEAR’S SYMPOSIUM, AND PETER MYERS MAKES A RIPOSTE AGAINST THE THEME.
| ‘On’ Monumentality |
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Commonwealth Place, by Durbach Block, Old Parliament House, New Parliament House. Photo Tim Linkins.
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Tent Embassy. Photo Christopher Vernon.
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Ball-Eastaway House by Glenn Murcutt. Photo
Anthony Browell.
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Swanston Street, with RMIT’s Building 8, by Edmond and Corrigan, and Storey Hall by Ashton Raggatt McDougall. Photo John Gollings.
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Line of Load Miners Memorial by the University of
South Australia. Photo Sam Noonan.
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The National Museum of Australia by Ashton
Raggatt McDougall and Robert Peck von Hartel
Trethowan. Photo Peter Bennetts.
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Scientia by MGT. Photo John Gollings.
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Sidney Myer Music Bowl by Yuncken Freeman, refurbished by Greg Burgess Architects. Photo John Gollings.
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Melbourne Museum by Denton Corker Marshall. Photo John Gollings.
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IN A SHORT but elegant essay, “On the ‘On’ of On Photography”, Meaghan Morris
observes that “A text ‘on’ a topic is not necessarily as text ‘about’.” Ons, she writes, are “the
smooth swirls which are not straight lines that bind things together”. This sense of the
different purpose and effect of “on” is useful to keep in mind when considering On
Monumentality, a recent symposium organised by the RAIA NSW Chapter, UNSW, UTS and
the University of Sydney. On Monumentality was not really about monumentality instead the
event ranged widely over the theme, which became an opportunity to think around and
through many issues pertinent to contemporary architecture.
For the organisers, On Monumentality – subtitled Place, Representation and the Public Realm – was a chance to discuss public buildings and spaces. They pointed to the
diminished importance of the public realm and to the challenge that the dominance of
international capital presents to the interpretation and meaning of public and civic
architecture. They asked, “What is the nature of monumental architecture at the beginning of
the twenty-first century?” and “What reflections of ourselves do Australian civic and public
projects offer?”
Some participants engaged directly with these questions while others problematised
them by exploring related issues. Some were interested in how ideas of monumentality might
help them proceed when making buildings and how public buildings and spaces might
monumentalise civic life; others pointed to the impossibility of any kind of unified collective
meaning. Some addressed the complex history of the term itself, while others felt that the
topic no longer has any useful currency. Conceptions of the city and of the public were
contested. Works discussed included Richard Leplastrier’s Volunteers’ Memorial, the NMA,
the NGA, Federation Square, Commonwealth Place, Old Parliament House, New Parliament
House, the Tent Embassy, Storey Hall, houses by Murcutt, RMIT Building 8, the Broken Hill
Miners’ Memorial and East Circular Quay. Participants spoke about monuments, the
monumental, monumentality, memorials and more. These are not the same thing and the
slippage between terms was both interesting and frustrating. At times the frames of
reference became so wide that all specificity and meaning seemed to dissolve. At these
moments Morris’s smooth swirling “ons” could be pulled into play to help find ways around
this complexity.
The other part of the event name had specific architectural resonance. “Monumentality” alludes to postwar anxieties about Modernism, and to Sigfried Giedion’s famous call for a
“new monumentality” and the debates that followed from it. Functionalism, Giedion argued,
was not enough: “People desire buildings that represent their social, ceremonial and
community life. They want buildings to be more than a functional fulfilment. They seek the
expression of their aspirations in monumentality…. Monumentality springs from the eternal
need of people to make symbols.” Although Giedion coined the term, the influence of another
participant in the post-war discourse – Louis Kahn – was perhaps more strongly felt
throughout the Sydney event. His commitment to monumentality as a way of expressing the
civic role of public buildings was, for some, a way to address the contemporary problems of
public space. Yet, as Maryam Gusheh pointed out, this is problematic. The debates of the
1940s about monumentality need to be historically and geographically situated. One cannot import them to twenty-first century Australia without reworking them (and, as Paul Walker
suggested, without rethinking “Australia”). For a number of participants Gianni Vattimo’s more
recent work on monumentality and “weak thought” offered a way to begin doing this.
The event was intended to “construct a bridge between theory and practice”, but there
were also many other differences at play. Indeed it was tempting to set up lots of oppositions
– place/discourse, theory/practice, academic/practitioner, phenomenology/post-structuralism,
city as setting for public life/city as collection of signs, Melbourne/Sydney, monumentality as
the way forward/monumentality as redundant, tectonic/surface, monuments as the
expression of shared values/the impossibility of such shared values, and so on – but this is
too easy. This array of differences operated not as a line-up of opposing positions, but as a
complex network of tensions between all kinds of contested ideas and ideals. It is in this play
of tensions that space might be found for things to happen – for thinking “on”.
The symposium began with David Leatherbarrow’s elegant, eloquent keynote address.
He deployed Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Savings Fund Society Building to argue that
monumental buildings are alternately impressive and recessive, both figure and ground.
Inconspicuously conspicuous, they have a kind of double temporality – engaged in the city,
the monumental building is also distant from it. The following day was split into two. The
morning session, “Theory, Culture, Place”, outlined a “broader theoretical and cultural
context”. The afternoon contained project-based sessions under the banner “Critical Review
and Further Directions” followed by a closing panel discussion. This made sense, but as Xing
Ruan asked, is the gap between theory and practice also a monument? Some of the day’s
most interesting and difficult questions were raised in the morning session, but they were not
returned to in the afternoon.
The event also felt like a monument to the architectural establishment. All the speakers
were well worth hearing, but it would have been good to hear some less expected voices.
Compelling issues were raised by the “newer voices” of the three academic respondents in
the “theory” session. I would have also been good to hear what younger practitioners, or
those working on the margins of architecture or landscape, might have to say on this topic.
Caroline Pidcock asked twice why it was that the only women invited to speak were
academics. The second time, this question was addressed to the closing panel of
“distinguished architects and practitioners”, who were asked what role they saw for women
in the making of monumental architecture. For the most part their responses were, for me,
depressing and unsettling – dangerously close to the traps of essentialism.
It was a densely packed day in which both too much and not enough was said. Perhaps
the various participants simply need more practice talking with each other. There are few
formal opportunities for academics and practitioners to talk together around ideas and issues
that concern architecture as both discipline and practice. For me this was the most important
thing. Regardless of topic, this opportunity to talk “on” architecture, across academia and
practice, is important. We need more such events.
The symposium raised many questions. For me the most compelling were not about
monumentality, but come from this particular exploration “on” it. Why do women find a voice
in academia (and other “marginal” locations) more easily than practice? How might the
occupants of the Tent Embassy, and those it tries to represent, find a voice in the “conflict of
representations” that is Australia, and in things that are built in the country’s name? Who,
more broadly is represented and who is left out in various attempts to represent civic life? Is
such a singular thing as “Australian culture” possible anyway? If a unified collective
experience is not possible how do we proceed? Such questions cannot be answered, but
they are worth re-iterating. As we talk about other things, they are questions on which we,
collectively, should speculate and work more.
Justine Clark is Deputy Editor of Architecture Australia.
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| Against Monumentality |
ONE OF THE persistent erosions of our
civic life has been the tendency for certain
architects and their patrons to impose a
level of so-called “monumentality” onto the
commissions with which they have been
entrusted. Unfortunately, this regressive
modus operandi has an energy largely
generated by an underlying conservatism
which has, historically, consistently broached
all political ideologies.
For example, the cancellation, in 1962, of
an already subscribed architectural
competition for a new National Gallery and
the subsequent awarding of this commission
to Roy Grounds was a key event in the
curtailing of Melbourne’s experimental
Modernism. Grounds, clearly to my mind
punching way above his weight, abandoned
any pretence at finding an appropriate
expression for one of the world’s greatest
art collections, and lurched full-tilt into a
crepuscular monumentalism reminiscent of
a 60s US Balkan consulate by that other
compromised Modernist, Edward Durrell
Stone. Melbourne got a simplistic, moribund
pile: a generation later the whole sorry
assembly has to be reworked to provide a
functional gallery.
Grounds’ design would not have survived
the first cull of a decent architectural
competition, such bombast being an
anathema to the sort of jurors that the
NGV’s then director, Eric Westbrook, would
have engaged. However, Westbrook had
resigned in disgust and the city fathers, far
from dismissing Grounds, went on to hand
him the whole Arts Centre complex, and
Melbourne is forever the poorer.
Compare this situation with the
“winging it” daring of Barry Patten and
Angel Immitorf’s beautiful 1956 design for
the Sidney Myer Music Bowl only just across
the way in the Melbourne Botanic Gardens.
No ponderous monumentalism here; instead,
a coherent work of modern architecture,
which from its unveiling was proclaimed a
true monument and adornment of this elegant
city. Despite Frederick Romberg’s attempt to
dismiss Patten and Immitorf as derivative, the
people of Melbourne embraced this
masterpiece by two very young architects,
and today it is as exhilarating as it was way
back in the 50s. We can only imagine what
sort of National Gallery would have been
forthcoming had Westbrook’s ill-fated
competition proceeded. Perhaps it would have
been a demonstration of the first rule of a
radically modern architectural culture, to wit,
that the best architects are always going to
be the ones you have never heard of,
So, the issue of monumentality is, I believe,
fundamentally flawed. Well, maybe not if your
preferences run to the works of architects
such as Paul Ludwig Troost, whose 1936 Das
Haus der Deutschen Kunst in Munich exhibits
an uncomfortable family resemblance to
Grounds’ morbid range along St Kilda Road.
Monumentality will always be the province of
the power elites and their supplicant
architects. Who would believe otherwise?
This is not a new dilemma. It has always
been with us, and is one of the ethical divides
that many hold against architecture as a
morally corrupted vocation. The old saw –
that power corrupts and absolute power
corrupts absolutely – has often been cited in
relation to the insensate destruction of
neighbourhoods, regions and even whole
cultures in the pursuit of monumentalist
architectural projects.
As an invited participant in Sydney’s
October symposium, “On Monumentality”, I
attended with intuitive caution that this could
well be an uncomfortable experience. It was:
the acceptance of intention rather than
necessity as the basis for the declaration of
a monument, and the concomitant
assumption that monuments can be defined
a priori, are very much reflections of the
tedious self-referencing within Australia’s socalled
“Design Culture”.
Peter Myers is a Sydney architect.
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