There are several reasons for this. For one thing, at my age and stage of life, with various health and other issues, my time and energy are limited. For another, I have begun writing a book that soaks up what time and energy I have for writing. It is not a compendium or collection of earlier work, but rather a new piece of work in itself, having to do with how World War Two shaped the architecture of the later 20th century. The ideas are fresh and the writing brand-new. Oh, and it’s not a picture book. I’ve never done anything like it.

From time to time, I will post an article on the blog. I certainly don’t expect readers to check into the blog regularly, as they have been able to do over the past four years. Readers who subscribe to the blog will get these occasional postings.

I must say that it has been a privilege to have communicated with so many bright and energetic readers. It has been a unique experience in my life that I will always value highly.

Thank you for all you have given.

LW

Hope to see you here again soon.

LW

After all, it is the new building that realizes best their ideas, hopes, aspirations, and the prospect of its being diminished over time amounts to their diminishment, as well. Most architects dislike the idea of buildings’ decay and work hard to avoid it by the careful selection of  materials, systems, and methods of assembly that will withstand the forces of nature continually attacking them, chiefly those of weather. Nevertheless, there is a tendency to decay inherent in materials and systems themselves—an entropy—that no amount of care in design or maintenance can overcome. Buildings will inevitably decay, and there is nothing architects or those charged with a building’s upkeep can do about it. So, what is an architect to think or do about it?

The most common thing is to forget about it. Or, to put it in psychological terms, to deny it, much as we put out of our thoughts our own inevitable decay and extinction. We tend to proceed in life as though we will live forever, thereby remaining optimistic enough to believe what we do has some enduring value and meaning. Without this capacity for denial, most would become paralyzed by despair. If architects did not believe their designs had some enduring qualities. it would be difficult to believe in what they do. So, even the designer of temporary architectural installations believes they will endure through various forms of documentation—photos, film, even reconstructions—and thus finds sanctuary in denial.

There is, of course, another, less common and more difficult way, and that is to embrace or at least accept decay from the start.

I personally find the Romantic fascination with ruins problematic. From Capar David Friedrich to Albert Speer (Hitler’s architect and town-planner). the evocative power of ruins has worked to produce powerful emotions, often for ideological—religious and political—purposes, making the motives exploitative, at the least. As a marketing device, nostalgic emotions of loss can sell paintings and politicians and their policies, but do little to advance knowledge.

Still, there is a tougher, more critical edge to the acceptance of the decay of buildings  and their inevitable ruin that places architecture in a unique position to inform our understanding of the human condition and enhance its experience. Chiefly, this is to include in design a degree of complexity, even of contradiction embodied in the simultaneous processes of growth and decay in our buildings, that heightens and intensifies our humanity. Thankfully, there is no stagy, contrived method to accomplish this in architecture. Each architect must find their own, unique way.

LW

The following photographs are by Cristopher Payne, from his series North Brother Island:

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Big and Empty – Part 3 – China National Film Museum

“The China National Film Museum is the biggest of its kind in the world.”

I have no clue what that is supposed to mean.

“Featuring the biggest IMAX theater of Asia”

Maybe “biggest” is already an attraction by itself, but that is completely missing the point here.

A history of film-making—the history of Chinese film-making—is itself something worthy of in-depth documentation, serious exhibition and passionate studies.

I feel that the bigness here seems somewhat redundant.

Is bigness the only way to achieve monumentality? I doubt it.

Is bigness the most efficient way to achieve monumentality? Perhaps.

Should bigness be the first category on the checklist for making a monument?

If that’s the case, then there must be something wrong. Scale is only one out of many things in a designer’s toolbox. I felt that if one is to prioritize SCALE when it comes to designing a monument, then it is almost like giving up design.

The “Big room” in the Film Museum did not really move me beyond that initial “wow.”

Of course, the most important things in a museum should be its exhibitions and collections. The great hall as a prologue should not take over the stage. But I am still not quite able to fully understand why I would think the space here to be too big and empty. By sharing my observations, there might be someone who would be able to help me make some sense out of things.

“Big and empty” might turn out to be the wrong words to describe what I felt…

So here we have the third museum of this series, the grand hall of the Film Museum…..

All museums need a ceremonial axis, even though most visitors would enter through a smaller side entrance with security checks.

The ceremonial entrance is still more important for there are more architectural gestures to be made over there. More story to be told, more intentions to be read, more attention to be captured.

Here we have a red star inserted into the ground, suggesting that this is not a Film Museum of the world but a Museum of Chinese film, and likely has to do with some revolutionary history. And in fact, “red films” with political agendas seemed to be a major aspect of early Chinese films.

Chinese films now are probably less politically based. I wonder if that has something to do with the fact that the box office area is rather pink behind that red star. Entertainment business is probably taking over that revolutionary spirit as the new major agenda. After all, a large portion of this museum is really just movie theaters. Many people are here to enjoy the latest film in the biggest IMAX. There is probably no need to paint red all over the new “Transformer” movie.

Yet one is reminded of the revolution aspect of the museum upon entering the second grand hall that serves as a central circulation space to the museum. In plan, it is simply a gigantic red dot.

Strangely, it is almost like taking New York’s Guggenheim and then cutting across all the ramps at one side to make a grand opening. What you are left with is a series of disconnected rings. To further make this circulation space redundant, the access to the ramps is blocked. I suspect, the designers probably had a Guggenheim in mind right from the start, but later realized the massing of this museum is simply too large to fully take advantage of the circular central circulation, and had to introduce a secondary means of circulation, or multiple systems of circulations as a result. By the time secondary systems are introduced, the ramps at the red dot have already become something that is completely redundant, which makes this grand hall something of a joke.

What should one do if this space is not fully functional? Well, you introduce a few more functions.

So the designers put in the seats, the side galleries, and a huge LED screen. Now that the space is functional, and looks beautiful under the red light, and capable of serving as a gathering/ceremonial space, everyone is happy. (again, my guess)

There seemed to be a jump in logic somewhere? Or am I thinking too much?

Somehow I do not feel quite right. Something is a little strange here. As if all the elements present are simply floating around and not really integrated. Perhaps it is simply because the room is too big?

Cheng Feng Lau

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All photos by Cheng Feng Lau.

This is the last of  the Big and Empty series.

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SCREENPLAY

By Oyler Wu Collaborative

Screenplay by Oyler Wu Collaborative will be on view from 6/22 to 6/24 at Dwell on Design 2012 at LA Convention Center.

Screenplay is conceived of as a ‘play’ on one’s visual perception.  This twenty-one foot long screen wall is constructed of forty-five thousand linear feet of rope strung through a series of lightweight steel frames.  The wall is designed with the intention of provoking a sense of curiosity by slowly revealing its form and complexity through physical and visual engagement with the work.  The wall is made from a repetitious steel framework with rope infill that varies over the length of the wall in three dimensions, forming a thickened undulating screen made up of dense line-work.   In its orthographic, or ‘straight on’ view, the wall forms a meticulously organized series of patterns easily recognized by the viewer.  As the viewer moves around the wall, its three-dimensional qualities reveal a more complex system of deep sectional cavities, twisting surfaces, and material densities.  The experience is meant to build on an ‘on again/off again’ system of pattern legibility, using optical effects as a means of provoking engagement in the work.

Project Design and Fabrication Team: Dwayne Oyler, Jenny Wu, Huy Le, Sanjay Sukie, Yaohua Wang, Qing Cao, Farnoosh Rafaie, Jie Yang, Clifford Ho, Joseph Chiafari, Tingting Lu, Qian Xu, Mina Jun, Vincent Yeh, Kaige Yang, Shouquan Sun

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Comment by LW

In the perilous game of speculation about the design of space for human use, Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu have often insisted on constructing what they have conceived at 1:1. Drawings and scale models have not been enough. Consequently, the size of their speculative projects has been small. In their latest—Screenplay—we are given, as I read it, a domestic setting, let’s call it part of a room, defined by a wall and a piece of furniture.  What is remarkable about the project is the way the architects have reconceived these conventional elements and invented new techniques of construction to realize their new ideas. The wall becomes a three-dimensional screen into which is projected a complex network of spaces, a transformative sequence that—like Schwitter’s Merzbau—is inhabited by our own creative invention. There is a fantastical ‘play’ of scales here, an architectonic drama heightened by the wall’s unique construction, which hovers at the edge between transparency and solidity. It is from this vertical field that the rather conventional couch emerges, becoming radical in its familiarity.

Oyler and Wu show us here how closely linked full-scale construction and new spatial concepts always are. There is much to be learned from Screenplay, and much to be enjoyed.

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The following are articles published in the New York Times about the ongoing debates concerned with the most appropriate ways to commemorate the victims of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001:

June 6

Laying Unidentified Remains to Rest

By PATRICIA COHEN

Determining a Final Resting Place for Unidentified Remains

There have been anguished complaints by several families over the decision to eventually place the unidentified remains of people killed at the World Trade Center in an area, closed off to the public, in the National September 11 Memorial Museum complex. Seventeen family members who lost loved ones on 9/11 have sued the city as part of an effort to drive to revisit the decision. They argue that putting the remains in the underground museum is a disgrace; they prefer that the remains be placed in a spot outside the museum, in a manner similar to the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery. Museum officials as well as the families of other victims counter that putting the unidentified remains at bedrock at the site fulfills an earlier promise made to organizations representing a majority of families. They also note that the repository will be controlled by the city’s medical examiner and not the museum, and that only the families will have access to it.

How should the decision about the final resting place be made, given deeply held but conflicting viewpoints? Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, curator of anthropology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science and an expert on the repatriation of Native American skeletal remains, has consulted with some of the 9/11 families who oppose the museum’s plan. He started off a discussion conducted by e-mail.

Mr. Colwell-Chanthaphonh: The decision should be made through consultation with all of the 2,753 families whose loved ones perished on 9/11 at the World Trade Center. The tragic dilemmas raised by the 9/11 terrorist attack parallel the museum world’s struggle to decide the fate of Native American skeletal remains. Different cultures and religions around the world have long maintained that the tangible vestiges of a human life have a distinctive power. For centuries, Western common law has affirmed that human skeletons are not “property” that can be taken without consent. In 1990, that principle was enshrined in the Native Americans Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

Over the last two decades, we have learned that with human remains, the most important stakeholders are the descendants and the best way to resolve conflict is through open and respectful dialogue. These lessons would recommend that the 9/11 museum start consultation by writing a letter to all of the victims’ families on this issue, holding a series of forums exclusively for them and inviting them to take a principal role in the decision.

This work will be hard but imperative. Ideally, a consensus among the families can be reached. In its absence, the 9/11 museum could either devise a means to determine the majority of families’ viewpoint (majority rules) or offer a new solution that strives to address the widest array of concerns (multiplicity rules). But more than offering a quick fix, the mere process of dialogue will demonstrate respect and an acknowledgment that curators do not have exclusive power over the dead. The families should be given the chance to give consent — to exercise their rights as kin.

Thomas Lynch, a funeral director in Milford, Mich., and the author of several essay and poetry collections, including “The Undertaking: Life Studies From the Dismal Trade,” underscored the difference between the sacred space of a cemetery and a museum:

Mr. Lynch: Ours is the species that deals with death by dealing with our dead. The obligation to consign them to a final resting place of our choosing — the grave, the tomb, the fire, air or sea — is a signature of our humanity. And among the ongoing grievances the families of the unidentified dead of 9/11 share is that they never got to enact these deeply human duties for their deceased family members. The impulse to regard the victims of 9/11 as somehow belonging to all of us is an honorable and natural one. They were our own. But the dead of that horrific crime belong first to their families, who have, after all, been brutalized not only by the murder of their family member but by the act that commingled their death with the disappearance of their physical being. The remains of the dead, however indistinguishable from fellow victims, nonetheless occupy sacred space in the minds and hearts and memories of their people, who want and need some sacred space in which to place whatever remains.

While a museum is an important civic space, it is not a cemetery. It is not sacred, set apart. It may be educational and instructive, illuminating and entertaining — all worthy and beneficial outcomes. It may, as its etymology suggests, become a place of meditation and reflection. But it is not a cemetery, nor does declaring it a “memorial museum” make it so.

Once, on the upper floor of the British Museum, I came upon the exhibition of Egyptian antiquities which included several mummies of various ages. At some level I felt complicit, by my interest, in a desecration: that these were fellows of my own species being disallowed, for the sake of worthwhile archiving of human history, the sacred rest to which the living endeavor to consign their dead. Placing the dead in a museum may well be such a well-intentioned but ultimately mistaken decision — the right thing done in the wrong place.

Whether the space “adjacent to and accessible through” the 9/11 museum does not constitute a space that is “part of” or “in” the museum is a matter on which some families understandably disagree.

While I agree entirely with the decision to include family members of all the 9/11 victims in a dialogue about the proper disposition of their dead — those that have been recovered and identified and those that will never be — where the dead cannot be specifically identified, the will of the majority of families should prevail.

Charles G. Wolf, whose wife, Katherine, was killed at the World Trade Center, was a member of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation’s Families Advisory Council and participated in the conversation series sponsored by the Sept. 11 museum during the planning stages. He argues that the kind of full-fledged discussion that Mr. Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Mr. Lynch propose has already occurred.

Mr. Wolf: In making a decision about the unidentified remains from the World Trade Center wreckage, the first thing one must do is acknowledge the very definition of what we’re dealing with: unidentified remains. No one but the Creator knows whose remains are among these remains and whose is not. Therefore, no one family or group of families can lay claim to saying, “my son,” “my daughter,” “my husband,” etc., is among the remains, and no one can have exclusive say of what should happen with them.

This is why these remains are still in the custody of New York City’s chief medical examiner.

Since no one can say their loved one is or is not among the remains, one of two ways to decide disposition of the remains can happen. It becomes either an official decision of the chief medical examiner, or the World Trade Center 9/11 families as a group decide.

This same issue for the Pentagon families (who lost 125 people) and for the Flight 93 families (who lost 40) is an easier process, in relative terms, compared to the 2,753 people (excluding hijackers) killed in the World Trade Center and the two planes that crashed into the towers. How do you work with all those people? Do you do it in a democratic fashion? If so, whom do you talk with, only the next of kin? To a married person, next of kin is their spouse, but what about the blood relatives? Marriage is a legal relationship. How can you not include blood relations like the parents, grandparents or siblings in the conversation? This becomes a gargantuan task, if you even can get people to deal with such a touchy subject as this.

An alternative way to do this is in a republican manner, where a much smaller number of representatives of the W.T.C. families can discuss this and decide what to do — just like Congress, our state legislatures and city councils do.

By the way, this has already happened.

In the first weeks and months after Sept, 11, several 9/11 family members started advocacy groups. Eventually, the leaders of these groups, and other 9/11 family activists, were invited to be part of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation’s (L.M.D.C.) Families Advisory Council (F.A.C.).

L.M.D.C. was created after Sept. 11, 2001, by then-Governor Pataki and then-Mayor Giuliani to help plan and coordinate the rebuilding and revitalization of Lower Manhattan. The F.A.C. provided a legitimate and formal way for 9/11 family members’ wishes, viewpoints and suggestions about 9/11 matters that pertained to them to be provided to city and state officials. There were many meetings with lengthy discussions and formal votes. Minutes of the proceedings were recorded.

Members of the F.A.C. included heads of all the family groups. It was through the Families Advisory Council that the decision regarding the placement of the unidentified remains at bedrock came about.

Mr. Colwell-Chanthaphonh remained unconvinced that all the families were give sufficient opportunity to express their views.

Mr. Colwell-Chanthaphonh: Mr. Wolf is skeptical of consulting so closely with all of the families in New York, and instead suggests that a “republican” approach of representative government is the best solution. The major problem with Mr. Wolf’s proposal is that it simply has not happened.

Again, the museum world’s work with Native American communities may be instructive. Many Native American remains in museums have large numbers of potential descendants. Consequently, we consult not only with kin but also tribal governments who represent their citizenry. These tribal governments have constitutions and constituents; elected tribal officials have the authority of their people and are accountable to them.

There is no equivalent political body for the 9/11 families of New York. Instead, there is only an eclectic assortment of small groups that have been selectively involved in discussions. The concerned families may not disagree with Mr. Wolf’s republican proposal: rather, they insist that they have not been represented in these decisions. Without fair representation, they sensibly want every next of kin to be included.

In fact, when asked directly, many families seem to reject the current plans. Several family advocacy groups have explicitly called for new and inclusive consultations, which the 9/11 museum has rejected. But until the 9/11 museum solicits feedback from all the families, this is the best information we have, which shows a wide range of viewpoints.

Either the 9/11 museum must devise a true democratic representative method or it must invite all of the next of kin to participate in the decision-making process about the unidentified remains. Those are the museum’s choices, but it has refused to do either.

Mr. Wolf offered a detailed reconstruction of how the decision to place the unidentified remains at bedrock was reached.

Mr. Wolf: The September 11 Memorial Museum had nothing to do with the decision. The proposal was made by the Families Advisory Council and it preceded the existence of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center Foundation, which began fund-raising in the spring of 2005. Here is how it happened.

Somewhere around late 2002, before we knew what the memorial would be, or that there would even be a museum, the members of the Families Advisory Council began discussing the unidentified remains. These remains were (and still are today) residing in a makeshift temporary setup in back of the medical examiner’s office near the East River. The overwhelming feeling among the council members was that these remains should be “repatriated” back at bedrock at ground zero from whence they came. Bedrock was “sacred ground” to the 9/11 families, and the F.A.C. strongly felt this was the right place for the unidentified remains.

For the purposes of lobbying on very important matters, several family groups joined together under the banner of the Coalition of 9/11 Families, including those groups headed by Jennie Farrell, Mary Fetchet, Marian Fontana, Anthony Gardner, Monica Iken, and Sally Regenhard.

The coalition, as they were called, supplemented the F.A.C. process and took the issue of the placement of the unidentified remains directly to the 9/11 families themselves. They mailed thousands of cards to family members, asking their feeling about placing the remains back at bedrock. The coalition reported that the families were overwhelmingly in favor of this. The coalition then proceeded to send a letter to Governor Pataki, with the power of their survey behind it, formally requesting his support for the remains be returned to bedrock. Every coalition member signed this letter, including the one coalition and F.A.C. member who now leads the fight against the remains being placed at bedrock.

Meanwhile, the Families Advisory Council asked the chief medical examiner if he would allow the return of the unidentified remains to ground zero. He said, yes, but only if his staff could continue to have access to the remains, so when new technology was available, they could go back and attempt to identify more remains.

With the blessings of Governor Pataki and the chief medical examiner, the placement of the remains at bedrock at ground zero became part of the formal planning document that the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation drew up and handed to the foundation for implementation and that subsequently was formally adopted by them.

That direction was an inviolable part of the planning of the memorial and museum. Even during the redesign process headed by developer and construction expert Frank Sciame in the spring of 2006, the F.A.C. strongly and unanimously stated that whatever else he did, the space for the unidentified remains, midway between the footprints of the twin towers, had to remain as part of the plan.

Sciame honored this request, and the designers found a way to place the repository adjacent to and accessible through the 9/11 Museum, but not in the museum.

Of all the topics the F.A.C. dealt with, this was one of, if not the most important topic. With the wishes of the 9/11 families known through the coalition’s survey, the F.A.C. knew it had made the right decision on behalf of all the families.

Mr. Colwell-Chanthaphonh: As Mr. Wolf points out, these decisions unfolded before a museum was even planned for the World Trade Center site. Not until October 2006 did the 9/11 museum — then under the banner of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation — release its request for qualifications for exhibit designs that explicitly included the human remains repository as a “programmatic element” for the visitor experience.

The families I have spoken with who knew about these early discussions have reasonably explained that in the early 2000s they assumed ground zero would become a civic monument, like a “tomb of the unknown.” Things change. Fair enough. But there is a stark difference between placing unclaimed human remains in a public memorial versus a private museum.

Given that the site’s plans have been evolving, the dialogue about the human remains should also be ongoing. In the museum world, one of the principles of consultation is that it must be continuing, because consultations are about positive long-term relationships. With such a goal, one would think the 9/11 museum would welcome the opportunity to speak directly with all the families — one of the key stakeholders in its institutional mandate — particularly when they have such a direct stake on this issue.

More than 40 percent of the families did not receive any fragment of their lost loved ones who died at the World Trade Center. This decision about the human remains is thus radically different from the museum’s judgments about the size of exhibit photos or whether to mention the Patriot Act. For more than 1,000 New York families, the 9/11 museum may be the only cemetery they will have.

I have heard different versions of the events that Mr. Wolf describes, but I wonder whether it really matters since the decisions made by those without authentic authority should not be binding. What democratic process elected these leaders? What recourse was there for those next of kin who disagreed? Did all 2,753 families even consent to a “republican” process? Many seemingly did not. As one New York family member recently told me: “When it comes to my brother’s remains, I wish to have a voice equal to that of all the other people involved. No one can, or should, represent my wishes for something so personal.”

I hope that we do not lose sight of the rights of these individuals as we seek solace for our collective grief.

Patrick White, president of Families of Flight 93, wrote about how the families of the 40 passengers on the plane that crashed in Shanksville, Pa. on Sept. 11 handled the unidentified human remains retrieved from the site. Mr. White, whose cousin Louis J. Nacke II died on board that day, noted that the Flight 93 families confronted a different situation from those whose relatives died at the World Trade Center or the Pentagon, notably that at least some remains were recovered and matched for every one of the passengers as well as the four terrorists. The relatively small size of the group also meant that all the families could be directly involved in meetings. The crash site is now a cemetery, and off limits to everyone except family members.

Mr. White: Recognizing that the circumstances surrounding the World Trade Center’s and Pentagon’s respective crashes were distinctly different in many regards, the experience of the Families of Flight 93 may not serve as the “best” or “right” way to reach the decision about a final resting place for unidentified remains elsewhere. Similarly, at the beginning of the discussion about final disposition of the Flight 93 remains, the respective family members, including the next of kin, certainly had a wide variety of differing views. However, we quickly recognized that because the remains were “unidentified,” no one voice of a particular family member, or even next of kin for that matter, was more meaningful or to be given greater weight than that of any other in the decision-making process.

And because no one could claim that their loved ones remains either were or were not part of those still”unidentified (including those of the terrorists) remains, there was an inherent equality of views between the participants that arose early on that forged a collegial and respectful dialogue. That in turn allowed these most sensitive and challenging issues to be productively discussed. Although many issues arose during the dialogue of “where, by whom, when and how” the unidentified remains would be finally be treated, by including all family members who desired to participate, while focusing on and being more deferential to the concerns and opinions of identified next of kin, the group meetings and teleconferences proceeded in a respectful and effective process leading to a consensus of next of kin for the final disposition of remains.

The Flight 93 National Memorial has also benefited from the group’s positive and productive partnership with the National Park Service, its federal advisory commission, former task force, the National Park Foundation and, most recently, the Friends of the Flight 93 National Memorial, all of whom have deferred to the Families’ position on questions such as this. Most significantly, close coordination and involvement with the county coroner assured that all issues of chain of custody and respectful care of the unidentified remains were properly addressed. In the case of the Flight 93 passengers and crew members, their next of kin and other interested relatives participated in a ceremony where on Sept. 12, 2011, three caskets of unidentified remains were reinterred in close proximity to the primary crash impact site. Responsibility for perpetually preserving the integrity of those remains is now in the hands of the National Park Service as part of the Flight 93 National Memorial’s Sacred Ground.

Although an arduous process, requiring great sensitivity and respect, all of those who had a potential interest were contacted and solicited to participate, and they did so according to their individual desires. Deeply held viewpoints and differing voices were allowed and encouraged to be heard such that when they finally melded, their decision lead to an outcome and ceremony acceptable to all that honored those we seek to remember as our heroes for their selfless sacrifice and courage. In how we acted, I believe we’ve further legitimized their legacy of hope.

June 5

For a Sept. 11 Museum, How Realistic Is Too Realistic?

By PATRICIA COHEN

How does a museum transmit the horror of the Sept. 11th attacks without traumatizing its audience? Where do you draw the line?

The National September 11 Memorial Museum’s staff and advisers have painstakingly combed through the mammoth collection of artifacts, audio recordings, videos and photographs in choosing what to display. Many items capture all too clearly the gruesome horror of that day and museum officials have been constantly forced to decide what is appropriate material for a museum exhibition and what might be too upsetting for visitors to see. We asked a group of museum professionals and trauma experts to discuss, by e-mail, how to get the message and history across accurately without being gratuitously shocking. Kari F. Watkins, director of theOklahoma City National Memorial & Museum, started off the discussion. She has dealt with the same issues in her own institution, which commemorates the bombing of a federal office building by Timothy McVeigh, a white supremacist, that killed 168 children and adults on April 19, 1995. She has also frequently consulted with the staff of the Sept. 11 museum.

Ms. Watkins:  It is important to show the trauma of that day without “prettying” it up too much.  People have to see the horror to believe it because what happened here and on 9/11 is too unimaginable for most people to believe. When you see a person walking down the street holding a torn shirt as a bandage, it becomes all too real. Plus, that is what happened and how people responded to these acts of terrorism. You have to also keep in mind that there is horror like this on daily television, Web sites and video games.

Edward Linenthal , author of “The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in the American Memory,” and a member of the Flight 93 Federal Commission in Pennsylvania , also pointed to the difficulty of communicating an event’s destructive power when popular culture is so saturated with violence. Mr. Linenthal also consulted with the Sept. 11 museum.

Mr. Linenthal: I think we use the term trauma much too easily, and I am skeptical that in a culture awash in horrific images people are very easily shocked. More’s the pity, perhaps, but it is an enduring —and ultimately unanswerable question —whether or not traffic in horrific images makes it harder for us to empathize with particular people in particular situations, or easier, since in some sense such images offer the opportunity for a public to participate, to “bump up” against the horror of an event.

The Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum offers a compelling immersion in the events of April 19, 1995, and some of its legacies, most powerfully, in my view, through the presentation of oral histories. I know, however, that for me, having come to know many of the people impacted by the bombing and involved in the creation of the memorial, the horrific power of the event meant more to me because of those personal connections.

Grady Bray, a disaster psychologist who consulted with the Fire Department in the aftermath of 9/11 and, later with the Sept. 11 museum, said it was better to err on the side of showing too little rather than too much.

Dr. Bray: For me, the first issue influencing the selection of images and sounds to be used in a public forum is safety. During their reporting of atrocities in the Congo, for example, CNN repeated numerous times in a 24-hour period graphic images of mutilation, dismemberment and beheading. There was a significant increase in reports from pediatricians concerning children who had witnessed these stories and developed nightmares, fearfulness and anxiety-related disorders. Primary victims are those directly — physically — present and affected by the events; secondary victims include responders and those who witnessed the events; and tertiary victims are those affected by subsequent information concerning these events. This last group would be typical for those visiting a museum or memorial. If one follows the old axiom from medicine, “Above all else, do no harm,” then imagery will be selected judiciously. It is possible to convey the horror of the event without the most gruesome and disturbing images and videos. Also, workers and volunteers at a museum or memorial will be repeatedly exposed to the presentations and be vulnerable to emotional trauma.

The second issue deals with the selection of gratuitous violence for shock value or because those who were powerfully affected by the event want others to experience the horror which they endured. Sometimes these victims have described an initial decrease in symptoms when they see the reactions of others to the imagery, but these improvements are short-lived. In reality, repeated exposure to sensory input of traumatic events does not decrease problems for these victims but, paradoxically, it seems to strengthen the destructive power of the event.

Sandro Galea , chairman of the department of epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, is the author of a study that looked at symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder among 3,271 civilian survivors two to three years after the 9/11 attacks. Like Mr. Linenthal, he was much more cautious about predicting what effect viewing violent images and hearing anguished audios will have.

Dr. Galea: There is little doubt that images and reminders play an important role in helping us remember, and cope with, tragic experiences. One always worries that watching images or other reminders of horrific events may contribute to poor mental health or may otherwise substantially disturb those who watch these images.

The science on this question remains unclear.

Some studies have shown that people who have already experienced an event may, when seeing reminders, develop psychopathology triggered by memories of the event.  Other work has shown that the greater the “dose” of exposure (for example, number of hours of television watching commemorating 9/11) the greater the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder in this group.

There is, however, little evidence that people who are not at already elevated risk are harmed by images of a horrific event.

As with many other things, the science here needs to be balanced with the larger social good that is intended. I think some warning that witnessing extremely graphic images, which remind us of a real tragedy, may be harmful to some may be a reasonable caution.

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Ms. Watkins of the Oklahoma City museum emphasized that while it is important for visitors to understand the impact of real violence, ultimately the museum should tell a story that leaves people feeling optimistic about the future. Mr. Linenthal, Dr. Galea and Mr. Bray cautioned that it can be impossible to predict what reactions an exhibition might provoke.

Ms. Watkins: I think the bigger challenge is to tell a complete story, and tell it sincerely, without manipulation or sensationalism, and make people of all ages understand the horror and why teaching hope is so important. When guests walk through the door, some know what happened, but we are also educating an entire generation who didn’t live this story, so it is “new” to them. We must make sure to teach visitors to remember those who were killed, those who survived and those who were changed forever. May all who leave this Oklahoma City Memorial & Museum know the impact of violence. It is our job to ensure each visitor has the opportunity to experience comfort, strength, peace, hope and serenity.

Mr. Linenthal: With the Oklahoma City National Memorial, there was a strong conviction that the entire project should move beyond just a focus on the violence, to educational work, and, as Kari Watkins notes, the “opportunity” for visitors to experience emotions, convictions other than horror and sadness. No historic site or memorial can program what a visitor may or may not experience or take away from a visit, hence the word opportunity is significant in Kari Watkins’s observation. There is, I think, an often unspoken hope that the cautionary tales, the purported “lessons” of an exhibition will be as transformative in a humane way as the event represented was transformative in a destructive way. Whether this is possible or not is, I think, open to question. No one can guarantee what a visitor takes away from such a visit. And the formulaic response of, for example, “Never again,” should in reality be, “Will it ever stop?”

During the planning of the permanent exhibition of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, there was concern that the allure of Nazi martial music, Hitler’s voice, the vibrant colors of a flag had the potential to be, well, alluring, as was the goal of Nazi spectacle. But in a storytelling museum — to use the characterization of the late Shaike Weinberg, the former director of the Holocaust museum — the rise of National Socialism is a crucial part of the story. There are ways to neutralize somewhat the allure of spectacle — a kind of screen in front of a large Nazi flag, for example — but the truth of it is that each visitor will inhabit the site in their own distinctive manner.

Dr. Galea: It seems to me a large, but laudable goal that the museum aspires to provide comfort, strength, peace, hope and serenity for all visitors. I also think it might be unrealistic. Some will be unsettled by visiting a memorial to tragedy, and that is perhaps how it should be. It is the museum’s role to help us mark and commemorate events and accept that such memorials may provoke a range of human reactions. It is also the role of the museum to ensure that, guided by science, insofar as possible, those who are particularly at high risk of being harmed by reminders of tragedy are warned and given opportunity for comfort and mitigation if needed.

Dr. Bray: For most who attend a memorial and museum such as 9/11, it is more common to experience:

1. Sadness, a function of grief for those who died and their families;

2. Increased anxiety due to a greater awareness of the human potential for violence;

3. Resiliency focus, which is fostered by the stories of self sacrifice and bravery; and

4. Disquiet based on their personal confrontation with mortality.

The museum’s function is to provide information and experience.  Every attempt should be made to be factual, as opposed to sensational, but each visitor personalizes their experience far beyond what the organizers can control.

***

Mr. Linenthal pointed out that withholding disturbing images can also have a serious downside.

Mr. Linenthal: There are some images, aren’t there, that are seemingly too “indigestible” for us to make part of an enduring visual narrative. For example, how quickly did the images of those people forced to leap from the World Trade Center towers on the morning of 9/11 disappear? Or how rarely do we see a fascinating photograph by Thomas Hoepker on that morning of people in Brooklyn seemingly indifferent to the catastrophe unfolding in front of them? While this is not a horrific image, it is one that does not fit easily into any narrative of that morning.

I think as well of photographs not taken, sparing us from thinking too much and too long on the enduring cost of violence. Invisible to most of us, for example, are veterans’ hospitals, and the human cost that the conflict has wreaked on the patients within. But we are spared such scenes, which would make the all too-easy rhetoric of martial enthusiasm more difficult to engender and to absorb.

***

Mr. Linenthal emphasized that there is not necessarily a right or wrong decision in some instances. To illustrate, he explained how the United States Holocaust museum reasoned through a couple of difficult questions.

Mr. Linenthal: For survivors, their extended families and many others, the U.S. Holocaust museum was a sacred place, a place for commemoration, a site for the power of the voice of the witness to be paramount. This voice often rests uneasily with the more detached voice of the historian or curator, and at sites that combine memorial and museum, this can lead to strong disagreement. During the planning of the permanent exhibition at the museum, for example, there was an ongoing debate over whether or not to display in the most intense part of the exhibition actual women’s hair that had displayed in the Auschwitz museum. Women’s hair was used by Germans to make socks for the Wehrmacht, insulation in submarines, and was much more personal, more intimate, than other artifacts. But for more than a year there were those on the museum’s content committee who opposed its use, and finally a female survivor said that the hair could have come from her mother and should not be displayed. While historians and museum professionals had made good arguments about why it was appropriate to display the hair, in this case the late Shaike Weinberg, the museum’s director, honored the commemorative sensibilities of some survivors and chose not to display the hair.

In another situation, however, Weinberg chose to act on the need for the exhibition to offer graphic visual evidence of killing processes, even though it was uncomfortable for some survivors. This issue arose because out of respect for commemorative sensibilities: early drafts of the permanent exhibition were careful not to “defile” the sacred environs of the museum with the horrific images of perpetrators at work. But this meant that the museum’s narrative would have been one in which people were leading themselves to their death, with perpetrators invisible. Weinberg and many others recognized that fidelity to a full historical narrative had to include the presence of perpetrators, uncomfortable as it may be. So, in this case, the historical voice trumped commemorative sensibilities.

I do not think about these revealing moments as ending with “right” or “wrong” decisions. Rather, they illustrate how mindfully those tasked with the creation of such exhibitions must weigh often conflicting convictions and emotions about highly charged events, often under intense public scrutiny.

June 4

Choosing From the Many Lessons of Sept. 11

By PATRICIA COHEN

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

In eight years of planning a museum at the National September 11 Memorial, every step has been muddied by contention.

One of the difficult questions that the National September 11 Memorial Museum has grappled with is how to explain why a group of radical Islamists wanted to bring down the World Trade Center towers and attack the Pentagon. We asked a group of historians and educators to talk about what they thought was essential for people to understand about the history leading up to 9/11.

David Blight, a professor of American history at Yale University and an adviser to the museum, started off the discussion by urging people to take the long view and place the attacks in a larger tapestry of human experience.

What do you think is essential for people to understand about the history leading up to Sept. 11?

Mr. Blight: To concentrate only on the horror and drama of that day and the events in its immediate aftermath, while utterly compelling, does not necessarily leave us understanding anything. While mourning, people are not easily capable of seeking historical understanding, of taking a long view; 9/11 seemed so unparalleled, unique, without precedent. But is it? The methods and the overwhelming and immediate results were new. But the human impulses, as well as our own human reactions, were and are hardly new. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we desperately searched for historical analogies through which to find understanding. Was this a Pearl Harbor? An Antietam or a Fort Sumter? Was this only the beginning of an enveloping conspiracy against Western values and societies? Was this warfare of a new kind for which we had no analogies?

All the panelists agreed about the importance of understanding the historical context. But the other commentators — Anthony Gardner, whose brother died in the attacks and is on the museum’s advisory committee; Bill Braniff, executive director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) based at the University of Maryland; and Wilfred M. McClay , a professor of humanities and history at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga — took issue with Mr. Blight’s approach, particularly his insistence on a centuries-long timeline and his reluctance to single out the Sept. 11 attacks as special.

Mr. Braniff : I agree that while terrorism is a painfully human phenomenon that has analogous moments in the history of political violence, the tragic events of 9/11 were unique. They were the product of a specific and violent modern history and a group of violent individuals who rejected it, lashing out in an attempt to reorganize society according to their interpretation of a pre-modern Islamic political doctrine the world had largely left behind.

Mr. Braniff explained the particular nature and aims of Al Qaeda.

Mr. Braniff: Al Qaeda was born during a decade-long war in the 1980s, constituted largely by aggrieved citizens of failed post-colonial nations and nurtured by a confluence of specific geopolitical and ideological factors. From the resulting safe havens, Al Qaeda has endeavored to enable the violence of others and orient that violence against the West, attempting to bleed it in a war of economic, military and political attrition.  According to this logic, attrition would lead to the severing of ties between the West and what they view as the illegitimate regimes of the Muslim world, allowing just governments informed directly by Islam to ascend in their place. Al Qaeda is a rational, zealous and murderous organization that has influenced other militant groups and individuals.  And because of its ability to incite other locally or regionally oriented organizations and individuals through training, funding, networking and propaganda, we see Al Qaeda as a central node is a larger system of violence.

When teaching about Al Qaeda and the events of 9/11, I try to force my students to grapple with the multifaceted reality of Al Qaeda’s coexistence in a crowded landscape of actors.  Many treatments of the topic look at Al Qaeda as an ideological manifestation exclusively — appearing out of the ether of religious ideas to attack and disappearing once more.  Others treat Al Qaeda as if it exists in a vacuum untouched by the forces affecting the rest of us, or perhaps in a boxing ring going toe-to-toe with only the United States as an opponent. Al Qaeda can only truly be understood in a broader context.

Mr. Gardner said that in too many accounts of 9/11, the focus on Qaeda members as rational actors has been obscured.

Mr. Gardner:  In most 9/11 narratives, the perpetrators — Al Qaeda operatives, plotters and financiers — are often absent.  Planes crashed into buildings as if  by accident, the tragedy caused by some illusive invisible evil. Following is a good example of this: The 9/11 Commission Report includes a timeline of the hijackings. Several of these hijacking timelines reference the words of the terrorist captured through radio communication, i.e. “We have some planes,” and yet each timeline lacks a few important words. Consider:  “8:46:40, AA 11 crashes into 1 W.T.C. (North Tower).” Some might say this is a nuance, but there is no reference to the men who deliberately crashed those planes. A more historically accurate description might be: 8:46:40, Al Qaeda terrorists crash AA 11 into 1 W.T.C. (North Tower). Indeed, men, fueled by hatred for the Western world, flew those planes with innocent civilians onboard deliberately into buildings with innocent civilians in them. These were educated men who made choices. They were radical Islamists.

***

The Sept. 11 Memorial Museum begins its recounting of history with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, which incited an armed resistance by Islamic fighters supported by the United States. Mr. Braniff, Mr. McClay and Mr. Gardner agreed that this date is a logical starting point. Mr. Gardner, who is also the director of a museum, spoke of his experience as executive director of the September 11th Education Trust.

Mr. Gardner: Over the years I have interacted with thousands of high school teachers who are struggling with how to teach 9/11 in the classroom.  They wonder about what to say about the perpetrators.  For the most part, they all report the same thing: the biggest challenge is that students want to know why this happened. Some education programs out there go as far back as the crusades to begin the conversation of religiously motivated conflicts and brutal acts through time. The scope of a timeline affects the depth of context it provides for historic events such as 9/11. A shorter timeline may lead to very different causes and conclusions than a timeline of greater scope.  This raises the interesting question of when does the history of 9/11 begin. In the September 11th Education Program, the timeline begins in December 1979 with Soviet forces invading Afghanistan. Our first mention of Osama bin Laden references how he provided financial and organizational aid to the mujahedin in Afghanistan in 1980.

He and Mr. McClay followed with varying lists of terrorist threats and attacks that should be included in a historical review, including, for example, the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979; the 1983 bombing of a Marine barracks in Beirut; the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center; bin Laden’s 1998 fatwa instructing all Muslims “to kill the Americans and their allies, civilians and military, in any country where it is possible”; the bombing of the United States Navy destroyer Cole in Aden, Yemen in 2000; and the suicide bombing less than two weeks ago by a Qaeda militant in Yemen’s capital. They emphasized how an accurate understanding of this history was essential to current policy-making.

Mr. McClay: The situation in which we find ourselves has developed through the Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush and now Obama administrations. No political party escapes blame for where we are now. And the revolutionary Iranian regime that started it all back in 1979, whose apocalyptic religious vision has been shared to a greater or lesser extent by others in the loose network of Islamist militant groups, now appears on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons. There seem to me to be some fairly obvious inferences to be drawn from this history.

Mr. McClay addressed what he viewed as the shortcomings of Mr. Blight’s perspective.

Mr. McClay: Mr. Blight’s willingness to constantly sift through and reconsider the past from a variety of perspectives, including those antithetical to one’s own interests and settled convictions, is admirable. But we academics have a tendency to think that all the world is, or should be, a freewheeling seminar room. And that becomes a problem when one wants to draw fruitfully upon the past to make consequential choices as a citizen or a statesman. The long view can be the wrong view when it blinds one to the demands of what is proximate.

Mr. Gardner: I agree with Mr. McClay.  Because the threat of terrorist attack is ongoing, the study of events leading up to and since 9/11 provides context and has the power to save lives.  We must ensure that generations that follow us do not become complacent once again. In the spring of 2001, I had a conversation with my brother Harvey about terrorism, specifically about the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.  That day, we stood at the base of 1 World Trade Center and looked up at the soaring tower, and concluded that the only way terrorists could take it down would be through an air strike. We quickly dismissed this as highly unlikely because no enemy would be able to get jets anywhere near the buildings. After all, our military would intercept the enemy long before they could reach the towers and by extension — us.

What my brother and I both lacked that day was an in-depth understanding of the history leading up to the 1993 bombing and a timeline of terrorist activities and threats to that very moment in time. This lack of knowledge provided a false — albeit convenient — sense of security. We never could have comprehended that less than a year later, Al Qaeda terrorists would use commercial airplanes as weapons, killing 2,977 innocent people (including Harvey), damaging the Pentagon and reducing the W.T.C. to a smoldering pile in their brutal, coordinated attack. As a nation we were stunned by the terrorists’ actions on 9/11. No Americans should ever be caught off guard again. I want people to understand the history of 9/11 is still being written, that it was a deliberate coordinated attack  and it is an ongoing narrative that has an impact on all of us.  If the lessons of 9/11 history are heeded, perhaps 50 years from now, when two brothers stand below (the new) 1 W.T.C. and assess their safety, they are informed by the in-depth knowledge 9/11 history provides.

Mr. Blight: I take the point that urging too much of a “long view” of the causes and immediate consequences of an event like Sept. 11 can — in its own urgent crisis — stifle necessary responses, even impede decisive military action. Yes, it is the job of leadership to provide people with a clear sense of direction. And yes, indeed, 9/11 came from a “specific and violent modern history” that forged Al Qaeda out of radical Islamism. But is 9/11 really “unique” because Al Qaeda is a “rational, zealous, and murderous organization” bent on recruiting other disgruntled, post-colonial militants from failed states to their heinous methods and ideology? This too has happened before.

I am all for understanding and teaching the very specific historical origins of 9/11 in the post-1979 Iranian-hostage world. But history never stops happening, and what the famed French historian Marc Bloch called the “idol of origins” will always, and necessarily, take us further back, back into pasts — even our own — that we often prefer to avoid. Fifty years of U.S. policy toward Israel and the Palestinians are relevant. Why were those U.S. Marines in those barracks in the first place in Beruit? We in the West have a long history in Afghanistan well before Osama bin Laden created bases there. The U.S.-supported Contras in Nicaragua carried out terrorism in our name in the 1980s. And President Reagan called the U.S.-backed Jonas Savimbi — the rebel leader in Angola for so long and one of the worst mass murders of modern history — the “Abraham Lincoln of Angola.” Totalizing forms of war on civilians are not new to the past decades; we too practiced it on a massive scale in order to win World War II, and whether in the tales of Homer or of Shakespeare, the Trojan War was all-out slaughter of civilians in the name of “nation,” or “people,” or “cause.”

In the “Supplement” to his collection of Civil War poems, “Battle Pieces,” published in 1866, Herman Melville left this plea: “Let us pray that the terrible historic tragedy of our time may not have been enacted without instructing our whole beloved country through pity and terror.” Melville looked down deep through time at the human condition. All world-historical events should make us do the same.

Mr. McClay: I think it’s important for us to stay focused on the particular issue we’re trying to address here: What are the essential things that everyone should understand about the history leading to 9/11? Mr. Blight poses profound and thoughtful questions, but I don’t think they get to the issue at hand. He seems primarily concerned to stress two things: first, that America is not an entirely innocent nation, and second, that every war brings unspeakable horror in its wake. In short, he wants to stress that America is not an exceptional nation — not in its virtuousness and not in its suffering. There is something to be said for both contentions, particularly the latter, but they do not seem to me to be the most helpful or important points to be made in this context. Hence Mr. Gardner’s passionate rebuke seems to me entirely warranted, and is a useful warning about the dangers of attempting an Olympian posture with respect to these still-vivid events.

Mr. Blight asks, “Why were those Marines in Beirut in the first place?” The short answer is that they were there as part of a multinational peacekeeping force, also including French, British and Italian troops, which had been brought in to stabilize the Lebanese government and society after many years of devastating civil war. The peacekeeping force enjoyed some success, but eventually became a target for the various factions in the civil war, and after the calamitous barracks bombings, President Reagan chose to withdraw the Marines and leave Lebanon to its factions. It is a complicated history with complicated lessons, but one extremely relevant point emerges from it all. Osama bin Laden told John Miller of ABC News in a 1998 interview that “the decline of American power and the weakness of the American soldier”/// — whom he dismissed as “paper tigers” — had been “proven in Beirut in 1983, when the Marines fled.” In other words, the Beirut bombing, and the passive American response to it, played a key role in emboldening bin Laden to undertake the audacious 9/11 assault.

And, as much as I admire the beautiful and oft-quoted words of Melville with which Mr. Blight concludes, I do not think they should be read out of context. Earlier in that same “Supplement,” Melville insists that “we should remember that emancipation was accomplished not by deliberate legislation,” and that “only through agonized violence could so mighty a result be effected.” Yes, it would have been far better had a civil war over the issue of slavery never been necessary. It should always be the goal of statesmen to prevent wars or minimize their effects. And yet I doubt that Mr. Blight would contend that the American Civil War should not have been fought, or that it was fought in vain, or even that the ruthless but decisive tactics of General Sherman were unacceptable. For all of its horrors and atrocities, war is sometimes the least unacceptable alternative on offer. That fact, too, is part of the dark moral complexity of the human condition, a complexity from which none of us is exempt.

Mr. Blight: Mr. McClay misses the point of my use of Melville, even as he too appreciates complexity. If by “instruction” from “tragedy” we mean that the only lesson to be learned is to know thy enemy and kill him first, we would have a good clarion call for war-fighting. But what will we have learned as a civilization or as human beings? And of course some wars are worth fighting. What Melville meant was that even emancipation, the cause that might redeem the blood, itself came through pity and terror. The best lessons learned from history are not those that confirm what we want to hear, or think we already know; they are those that expand us, deepen our awareness, make us look way back in time to see ourselves anew.

***

Mr. Gardner challenged Mr. Blight’s assertion that “while mourning, people are not easily capable of seeking historical understanding, of taking a long view.”

Mr. Gardner: As Mr. Blight suggests, concentrating on the horror of that day and the events in the immediate aftermath alone does not lead to understanding causes. But there is a supposition in Mr. Blight’s statement that grief took away our ability to be historically cognizant.  Ironically, those with the most direct experience of 9/11 (families, survivors and rescue workers) became its first historians, struggling with redevelopment officials to ensure generations that followed would have a tangible connection to 9/11. Despite our best efforts, the National September 11th Memorial at the World Trade Center lacks context. In the years since Sept. 11, 2001, I have been an advocate for the preservation of artifacts (like the structural foundations, or footprints, of the towers at bedrock) and the return to the plaza of the large “Sphere” designed by Fritz Koenig that originally stood between the two towers. I have also pushed for 9/11 education because I want the generations that follow us to learn from this event (including its pre- and post- history). The stories from that day and its aftermath have the power to inspire.

****

Mr. McClay underscored that a review of the history leading up to 9/11 should include America’s intelligence failures.

Mr. McClay: Related to these matters is another essential and practical point that I think can be drawn from the lead-up to 9/11 and about which there should be broad consensus: we need far better and more reliable sources of intelligence than we had then. The 9/11 Commission Report was clear and emphatic in making that point, and the situation has not changed in that regard. Better, more trustworthy, less politicized intelligence could have changed a great deal about the history of the last decade and a half. We will need it even more in the years ahead, to know when to act and when not to act.

Mr. Braniff took issue with Mr. McClay’s disparaging characterization of America’s intelligence capabilities.

Mr. Braniff: The call for better intelligence is understandable but may set unrealistic expectations for the capacity of intelligence to predict the future and may also discount the intelligence successes since 9/11. The decision to fund anti-Soviet militancy in Afghanistan was a well-informed national security decision made through the cold-war lens, just not a prescient one. In terms of post 9/11 intelligence, according to data and analysis through 2010 from the START Consortium, the United States ranked higher on the list of most-frequently attacked nations before 9/11 (No. 10) than after 9/11 (No. 21).

The data also demonstrates a similar decline in the percentage of attacks globally: from 3.03 percent of terrorism incidents globally before 9/11 to 0.57 percent after 9/11. One of the many possible explanations for this decline is that the counterterrorism community disrupted, deterred or interdicted plots more successfully in the post 9/11 world. It is always worthy to strive for better and more forward-looking intelligence, but the efficacy of intelligence is notoriously hard to determine and even the best intelligence cannot obviate all risk.

He also pointed out that despite the tremendous loss of life on 9/11, the primary victims of Al Qaeda’s terrorism have been Muslims, adding that the organization has also failed in achieving its political aims.

Mr. Braniff: What actually has often been overlooked until more recently is Al Qaeda’s failure to limit the violence it inspires to the non-Muslim world.  While 9/11 was intended to bait the West and serve as a rallying cry for anti-Western violence, the legacy of 9/11 includes horrific internecine violence within portions of the Muslim world itself. Our data pins only 0.3 percent of the terrorist attacks in the world on Al Qaeda and its associated movement from 1998 to 2008, but these attacks were responsible for 5.4 percent of terrorism fatalities over the decade.

The lethality of Al Qaeda-inspired violence belies the organization’s political failures — increasing levels of ideological rejection in opinion polls in the Muslim world and violent rejection by citizens in active jihadist fronts such as Iraq and Somalia. Al Qaeda’s violent brand of anti-Western Islamism failed to take root, catalyzing Muslim-on-Muslim violence instead. The Arab Spring and its aftermath illuminates Al Qaeda’s political failures further; while Al Qaeda intends to overthrow the nation-state system, the Arab Street sought representative government within the nation-state system. Today, Islamist parties rejected by Al Qaeda for operating within that same nation-state system are capitalizing on the revolutionary moment.

***

Mr. Blight, who took on the task of starting off the forum, was given a final opportunity to respond to the other participants’ comments.

Mr. Blight: I appreciate very much Mr. Braniff’s broadening of the contexts in which we should understand Al Qaeda. As the enemy we have been fighting for 10 years, it is crucial to know that it has spawned larger patterns of violence across the world, and that we are not its only targets. I also honor Mr. Gardner’s eloquent voice as a family survivor, a witness, and a passionate teacher about 9/11. He may have, indeed, been one among the mourners who could step up and lead efforts for education and awareness of just who attacked us that day and why.

But most people do not have Mr. Gardner’s passion, time and devotion, and most prefer historical narratives kept simple, reassuring and triumphal. They want their sense of heritage confirmed, and not disoriented or obliterated, as 9/11 did at first. Merely fulfilling such popular emotions and desires (which I know are not Mr. Gardner’s goals) is hardly the job of historians and educators. Mr. McClay’s suggestion, therefore, that “the long view can be the wrong view when it blinds one to the demands of the proximate,” while perhaps a good prescription for fashioning a history that serves a current war effort, is hardly the way to educate the public up to larger understandings — especially in museums and classrooms.

Of course, all the world is not our “seminar room.” Would, though, that a little longer view of history may have emerged in the National Security Council’s war room when the president made the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. If what we wish to provide is a useful history for current policy makers about to decide matters of war and peace, then by all means offer options, buttressed with a short view. But if our goal as historians and educators is to expand the knowledge and imagination of the public and our students, then let us please offer the long-form essay at least, rather ideological sound bites.

Text and Photos by Cheng Feng Lau

Big and Empty – Part 2 – Capital Museum

If the National Museum is a place to exhibit the entire country’s history, should the Capital Museum be considered a museum that showcases the history of Beijing since the time it first became the capital city, or should it be considered a museum that happened to be located in the Capital city of China?

Why am I asking this question?

First of all, one would not build a museum for no reason, right?

There is probably more stuff than exhibition space in a city like Beijing, right?

If the imperial architectures can be transformed into museums, they would probably only be suitable for exhibiting imperial history.

So it seems to make sense to have another separate museum that is dedicated to everything else about Beijing?

If the architectural form of the National Museum is one of Western Neo-classical influence, what should be the style of a Capital Museum?

The architects and the politicians were probably thinking about a “modern-looking architecture that incorporates certain Chinese character, done with modern materials and construction technology, capable of showcasing a future-oriented spirit that is representative of the status of a capital city in a country that must not forget its past, and is capable of walking proudly into the new era…..” instead of something like a “traditional-looking architecture that is nostalgic about the capital city’s past, done with modern materials and construction technology, and has the capacity to hold any exhibition that shall exemplify great achievements within the city in this modern era”

One begins to read much contemporary architecture in China as not the manifestation of certain architectural concepts, but as certain struggles against some ideology/statement from higher up…

I find myself asking these questions:

Why do so many projects here seem so incomplete?

Or are these projects very well completed yet unrefined?

We know there is the problem of short construction phases in many buildings, but should that be considered as the most determining aspect in making certain architectural experiences less compelling?

If one is to look at certain Soviet architectures, the construction can be done rather poorly, but is still capable of conveying passion….

So how come so many architectures/buildings in China look so “unfiltered and full of noise”?

I begin to wonder, if that is not the issue of bad architecture, but simply the issue that the building is telling exactly that story behind its conception to realization…… too many inputs from too many important people might have led to the architect’s sacrifice of the purity and integrity of the project, and the short construction phase simply meant that the architect never had the time to “fight back” (if he/she is so capable, if he/she dares)…

In any case, should the exhibition tell a story, it should be a story about success, right?

So here we have the successful story of the successful architect/developer John Portman who is very much involved in major architectural/development projects in Beijing and other cities. (But we care about him in Beijing mostly because he did many big projects here, as one can point out a landmark on the exhibition poster.)

Strangely, there is something that catches more attention than the John Portman exhibition.

So what exactly is that bronze looking thing that sticks out of the façade that looks like a cone yet turned out to be a gigantic post/drum/column that sticks diagonally into the ground inside the museum?

[“It is a big gesture, so it must have a legitimate idea/function behind it to back it up, and this thing must not be a huge sculpture, because first of all this is not the bronze museum, and even if it is, there is no single artist in China whose name is big enough, whose connections are solid enough to make a sculpture this big”. At that moment, I felt I was thinking like my project manager….]

So it has a theater, a gallery, and a few bathrooms inside it. The circulation along the interior walls of the museum atrium is too distant from the main exhibition hall to be considered major access into the “drum.” But that still, in my opinion, does not quite justify the use of the circular ramp within that thing to take people up. The space inside is simply too tight for the use of ramps. Somehow the architects were able to proportion the size of the drum in relation to the atrium in such a way to create a spectacle, yet not capable of managing the space within the drum, to the point that all three architects who went into the “bronze sculpture” that day decided that they just want to “get the ____ out of it” and did not even bother to take any picture. It is just badly done inside…

One simply wonders what led to the “architects’ decision” to make such a thing and to make it that way… Perhaps someone can help me to read into this, assuming architecture always conveys to the trained eye many things about its realization….

To be continued….

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Cheng Feng Lau

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Is this room empty? – Part 1 of 3 – Chinese National Museum

Text and photos by Cheng Feng Lau

After visiting a few museum projects in Beijing I began asking myself: why am I having this bizarre feeling that a few of these museums have spaces that are quite a waste?

The term “wasteful” did not occur to me at first. The first impression of the situation that I am describing is usually “big” and then “empty”.

I did not quite understand why as an architect I am considering the “grand entrance halls” of these museums to be big and empty. At certain moments I even ask myself, am I thinking too much like an engineer looking at an atrium space in a building and wondering how inefficiently that space is organized… But this is not about issues like optimization or efficiency…

So I start to ask myself another question: Is there a threshold to bigness?

Or in other words: is there a size limit to which one may design a space before it triggers the sense of emptiness? In one’s attempt to create the impression of grandeur through the means of increasing the size of a room, one somehow loses control….

So I attempt to search into my memory for “big spaces” in museums that do not make me feel “empty.” And then I remembered the turbine hall at Tate Modern.

To say the least, the turbine hall has certain sublime quality to it. Maybe that slightest fear/awe somehow filled the void. Or it is probably the fact that the turbine hall used to be completely filled (with machines) rather than emptied-out, the remaining walls are turned into palimpsests of its past, thus became a story book rather than merely a shell. At the same time one has to acknowledge the importance of the great works of art that occupy the space. I guess if it were bad art, the place would seem empty?

Now back to Beijing.

There are three projects – three great halls of three museums – that I would like to discuss in this series: Chinese National Museum, Capital City Museum, Chinese National Movie Museum.

China National Museum

It used to be the Chinese Military Museum, but got transformed into China National Museum. I guess that means instead of talking about a country’s military history, it now tells the story of the Chinese civilization from the very beginning…

The renovation is done by GMP. Since I have never visited this museum before the renovation, I cannot tell you if GMP has done a good job or if the original building is a good piece of architecture.

Of course you would have a grand hall on the central axis of this building, and this grand hall should be marked with a great piece of art. What you have here is the bas relief of the story the old fool who moved the mountain.

The story goes that a mountain blocks the entrance of the old fool’s house. (I still don’t get why the old man or his ancestor had to build the house at that location in the first place. But I was also told that I shouldn’t question why Achilles’s mother had to hold on to his heel and why just one dip and not multiple dip…….) Every time someone from the old fool’s family need to visit the town, they had to go over the mountain. It was such an inconvenience that the old fool decided to mobilize the entire family to level that entire mountain. How are they going to do it? Bucket by bucket, they tried to move the earth of that mountain and dump it at the sea hundreds of miles away. His neighbors began to call him a fool because of that. Yet the old man responded to those who called him fool: “I have sons and grandsons, and my grandsons are going to have sons and grandsons. Our family tree will go on and will never end but there’s a limit to that mountain. Eventually, one day we will be able level that mountain.” Somehow, the old fool’s action deeply moved someone in heaven. So heaven sent down someone to take the mountain away. End of story. Happy ending. Moral of the story? NEVER GIVE UP!!!

Interestingly, this story does incorporate some of the most important cultural philosophy of Chinese civilization: first of all the idea that a pure soul can move heaven with his/her action, which often leads to the solution of some problem.  Second, one must extend the family tree/gene pool, aka the notion of “bloodline”. Third, the deep attachment to the land, both in the sense of land is the basis of an agricultural society and also in the sense that land represents one’s origin. Fourth, Chinese civilization has been at the frontier of creating artificial landmass ever since pre-historical time. (Just joking)

I believe all elementary school kids in China would know this story either from their parents or their Chinese textbook. And I also believe that by the time they reach their senior years in junior high, they would have learned another phrase that probably came out of Taoist philosophy: If the mountain does not turn, the road will turn; if the road will not turn, one’s heart shall turn……

So the old fool that moved the mountain in the form of bas relief does in a way represent the Chinese civilization, which also means it is a suitable piece to occupy the center of the great hall of the museum with National status. So however big the space here might be, this bas relief would be capable of demarcating that bigness as a moment of contemplation and reflection…Maybe…..

One should probably say it is the materiality of the interior that made the space seems rich instead of empty. There was too much to look at, and the details were not bad. If one is to compare the size of the elevator shaft with the column with the space in which it situates, that dramatic contrast in scale would definitely cause some “wow”.

Anyhow, this space did not trigger the sense of emptiness that I am critical of. Yet I cannot say for sure if I would feel the same on a second visit, and I am not quite willing to say the presence of visitors is the most determinant factor…

To be continued….

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Cheng Feng Lau

Thank you, Mr. Cheng, for your outspoken and courageous reporting on the architecture of Beijing, for this blog.

(above and below) Michelangelo Buonarotti’s drawings for the fortifications of Florence, made in 1528-9. Courtesy of the Casa Buonarotti, Florence, Italy.

In 1528, when the Papal armies were threatening to attack Florence and restore the Medici family to autocratic power, the Florentine Republic gave Michelangelo Buonarotti the responsibility of strengthening the city’s fortified defenses. By the time the attack came in 1529, he had designed and overseen the construction of a number of ‘bastions’ at crucial junctures in the existing defensive wall around the city. These were so effective that the citizens of Florence were able to repel the superior attacking troops for nearly eleven months, until—through an act of political treachery—the city finally fell in 1530.

The design drawings Michelangelo made for the bastions had to consider their two main functions. First, to provide protected openings for the defenders to fire their muskets at the attackers, each of which covered a relatively narrow field of fire, but together covered the widest possible field of fire. Second, the walls of the bastion had to deflect incoming cannon fire in the form of cannon balls, which were as yet non-explosive. To accomplish both of these purposes, the walls had to be not only thick but relatively short and angled sharply with adjoining walls, creating a ‘corrugation’ that would conceal gun ports and better resist the impact of cannon balls. In his drawings, Michelangelo primarily studied possible variations on this fundamental idea.

For all their practical purpose, these drawings have uncommon aesthetic power. Of course, this is because they are made by one of the greatest sculptors, and a self-taught architect—an “amateur of genius,” as he has been called—but it is also because the bastions required had too short a history as a building type to have ossified into a rigid typology. Michelangelo was relatively free to invent strong new forms and didn’t hesitate to do so. Using straight and curved lines in various combinations, these designs assume—to the contemporary eye—the character of plans for buildings belonging to our era rather than his; or, at the very least, they anticipate expressionistic architecture of the present and last centuries that has been realized because of advances in building technology.

This bit of speculation is not, however, at the heart of the drawings’ emotional and intellectual power. For that, we have to look to a fluidity of invention captured in the drawings. Michelangelo’s mastery of mostly freehand pen and ink drawing (each line is precise and cannot be erased) gave him the freedom to experiment with form. Without this mastery, he would have sought, as any artist would, the safety of more familiar forms. We are struck by the élan of the designs, as much as by their visual coherence. We are moved by the seemingly effortless way they undertake the always risky task of invention. Not least, the fortification drawings inspire us to equip ourselves with the skills necessary to explore daring new possibilities for architecture, ones that engage the daunting challenges we—as Michelangelo—must confront.

LW

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(above) The Four Ideal Houses, seen in the Third Floor Lobby of the Foundation Building of The Cooper Union, on the day of the final review, May 3, 2012. From left to right: the Cone House of Dawn; the Cube House of Dusk; the Pyramid House of Noon; and the Cylinder House of Midnight. See program description below.

ARCH111-S12   ARCHITECTONICS

The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union

Studio Faculty:  Professors Lebbeus Woods, Aida Miron, Uri Wegman

Critics at Final Review: Pablo Castro (OBRA Architects); Christoph a. Kumpusch (Columbia University); Firat Erdim (IIT); and Nicholas Karytinos; Dean and Professor Anthony Vidler (Cooper Union); Professor David Gersten (Cooper Union).

Cone Dawn team:  Sam Choi, Maximillian Gideonese, Sang Jung Kim, Xavier Rivas, Alexander Ruiz, Diego Salazar, Kyle Schroeder, Mitchell Schuessler

Pyramid Noon team:  Art Dushi, Pedro Esteban Galindo, Jenny Hsiao, Kyle Keene, Sehee Lee

Cube Dusk team:  Alara Dirik, Diego Gonzalez. Isabel Higgins, Hannah Kim, Luke Kreul, William Siesjo, Vanessa Tai

Cylinder Midnight team:  Yoonah Choi, Cassandra Engstrom, Jemuel Joseph, Soyoun Kim, Yoo Min Lee, Jacob Oredsson, Jonathan Small

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Semester PROGRAM

FOUR IDEAL HOUSES

Project

This semester we will focus on the design of four Houses, which we term ‘ideal’ because each occupies a different elemental volume—cube, cylinder, cone, or pyramid—and each embodies a program of habitation based on a different cardinal time—dawn, noon, dusk, and midnight. Furthermore, the inhabitants of each House are assumed to be ‘ideal,’ in the sense that they embody, for our purposes, only certain universal human characteristics, such as physical size, capabilities of movement, perception of their environment, and interaction with it. The site of each of the four Houses will also be ideal, meaning sloped or flat, horizontal or vertical, and will disregard any inherently idiosyncratic features. In the design of each House, equal emphasis will be placed on the interior and exterior of its volume. In taking this approach, we realize that these ideal types exist primarily as ideas, yet find these ideas useful in the laboratory of the design studio as a means of understanding the fundamental elements of architecture.

Historical background

There is considerable historical precedent for our project. We find ideal architecture—of exactly the sort we are engaging—in examples from Vitruvius, through Alberti and Da Vinci, Ledoux, Semper, Taut and Le Corbusier, Archigram, up to the present in ideal projects by Abraham and Holl. These and other architects have found it important to define their personal principles of design, as well as to set a standard against which to measure their more reality-based work. Ideal architecture has been essential to defining building typologies, which serve the purpose of bringing a level of order to the diversity of urban landscapes. Each student is encouraged to look up and into historical examples, the better to understand the broader context of our work this semester.

Method

We will arrive at the designs of the Four Ideal Houses by a series of steps or stages, working both individually and in four teams, one for each House. As the design of each House progresses, it will evolve from the ideal forms of its beginnings to the particular forms of its development and conclusion. If we assume, for example, that the House of dawn has the form of a cylinder, we can expect that its ‘dawn-like’ ambiguity (neither fully night nor day) will make any changes made to the volume uncertain in their purposes; yet, human inhabitation requires that changes enable specific uses, such as going in and out of the cylinder, and letting in light and air. Consequently, each opening in the volume might be determined, say, by enabling several uses simultaneously. In any event, such a transformation will, in itself, be considered a next higher level of the ideal, in that it embodies a fundamental aspect—a continual evolution in time— of both the human and natural worlds.

Goals

Collaboration and teamwork

Each of us will approach this project with our own aspirations, our own ideals of architecture. It is crucial that, even when we work in a tightly knit team, we keep our own personal ideals and goals in mind. Teamwork is at its best when individuals who are clear about what they want to achieve collaborate. The key to their successful cooperation is for them to emphasize what they have in common, not their differences [of course, if they have no important ideas in common, they should not be on the same team]. In that way, collaboration is never a compromise of what each believes, but rather a reinforcement of the most important aspects of it by the similar ideas of other team members.

When working on our projects, we should keep in mind that the making of architecture is always a team effort. At the same time, we should recall that successful teamwork bringing together the work of strong individuals, requires leadership. It is never a committee effort, with decisions made by voting. Instead, at each stage of the design work and, later, the work of building, a leader must guide the collaborative effort; it may well be that each stage a team’s work will have a different leader. This leader usually emerges quite naturally, as he or she is the one who has the best idea about how to accomplish a particular stage of the work. It is rare that all members of the team will not recognize the best idea and agree on a leader for the stage of work it addresses. This sounds complicated but it will not be if all members of a team communicate with one another in an open-minded, relaxed and honest way. Achieving successful design collaborations is one of our goals this semester.

Human scale

We will emphasize in our work this semester the attainment of human scale for our projects. ‘Human scale’ is a term used freely by architects, but often with very little understanding of what it means or how it can be achieved in their designs. All too often, they indicate human scale in their drawings by drawing human figures in or next to their buildings, or, in models, little figures and model cars. These are actually very poor techniques because they do not attain human scale in the architecture, but merely indicate it graphically. Human scale in even uninhabited architecture is attained in two basic ways:

1) the presence of tectonic elements required by human use—stairs, windows, doors, and other elements that facilitate human use of spaces. Their size in proportion to a building’s overall form, and their relationship to each other do not merely indicate the relative size of people, but are necessary for people to inhabit the building and are therefore integral with it. Most of these elements are not arbitrarily sized, but confirm to the dimensional limits of the human body and its capacities.

2) the presence of tectonic elements used to construct a building—its walls, ceilings, floors, and other elements defining and articulating spaces. Buildings are not made of a single, solid material (contra CNC milling machines), but are constructed of many parts and pieces put together by human beings, and the pieces are sized accordingly. Whether they are assembled directly by hand—bricks or wood panels—or by the hand operation of construction equipment—steel beams, pre-cast concrete slabs—when these parts are visible in the completed building, they immediately establish the relative size of a person (the builder) and, thus, human scale. [Note that even the most seemingly monolithic of materials---reinforced concrete---is poured in parts and thus bears the marks of form panels and construction joints.] Achieving human scale in our projects is one of our main goals this semester.

Ideal Houses

The conception and design of ideal houses realizes the highest hopes of their designers, giving form and structure to their aspirations for themselves, architecture and through its place in the broader scheme of things, the many people engaged by it. The truth is that ideal architecture in the sense that we speak of it here can be constructed in the real world and with real materials—indeed, it must be constructed. The final drawings and models of the four Houses will—if made with intelligence, passion, and courage—achieve the reality of ideals. This is our most important goal.

[January 19, 2012]

(below) A sampling of drawings and large models of the Four Ideal Houses. The most authentic and valued drawings are those made to solve tectonic problems, rather than presentation drawings made for show after the solving of crucial problems of how to shape spaces and join diverse materials together. The large models—five to ten feet high—allow the design and construction of details and interior spaces. All model photos in this post by Professor Uri Wegman.

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The CONE/DAWN House:

Longitudinal section model—complete model not shown: 

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Cross sectional drawing:

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The PYRAMID/NOON House:

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The CUBE/DUSK House:

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The CYLINDER/MIDNIGHT House:

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(above) Light Metrical Instrument. Designed by LW, made by LW together with architect Leo Modrcin, c. 1987.

It has long been my contention that light does not reveal the presence of objects, but the other way around: objects reveal the presence of light. This flipping of the phrase is more than a trick with words, though it may seem like that at first. What it does is shift the emphasis of meaning. If light reveals the object, than it is the object that is important. But if objects reveal the light, it is the light that is important. In other words, the simple turn of phrasing changes the relative values of objects and light.

For me, light is the main thing.

Light is a natural physical phenomenon the complexity of which reveals the structure of human consciousness. Objects, including buildings, in their absorption and reflection of light, stimulate a human brain’s neural networks, in effect activating the brain. The more complex and nuanced the stimulation, the more fully the brain comes to life.  Shape, edge, texture, color, shadow, highlight, playing with and against one another, effectively enable the brain to make the most subtle distinctions, thereby imbuing human experience with a richness and complexity that defines it.

Whatever else is involved, the perception of light is central.

(below) Details from the Light Metrical Instruments series, 1987. If we can think of architecture as an instrument revealing the presence of light and therefore giving it a precise measure, then these instruments are proto-architectural. With their richness in variation of shapes, colors, textures, they inform the design of more complex programmatic structures.

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LW

(above) Thom Mayne, 2011. Photo by Reiner Zettl.

Excerpts of a Candid* Conversation between Thom Mayne and Lebbeus Woods

Recorded in the privacy of LW’s studio, transcribed by Dave Irwin

Note: a minimal amount of editing has been made, in order to preserve the spontaneity of the occasion.

*I do pay attention to my critics. In another forum, my use of the word “candid” was dismissed as disingenuous, I suspect because my comments to Thom were too supportive of his work and thought. It is true that I find little to quarrel with and much to be excited about in his recent book on architecture and urbanism. Still, I contend that agreement doesn’t preclude a deeper exploration of ideas, which I think the candid talk between us did—indeed it might be necessary for it. I thank my critics and readers for enriching the conversation with their comments, pro and con. [LW]

GROUNDED IN ORGANIZATION

LW: OK. But the truth that you’re seeking is a truth about the nature of how things come into being; how things grow, this idea of their morphology. The idea of how do things come into being in the form that they are.

This is what concerns you. It is not whether there is God or no god—that has nothing to do with your discourse. It has to do with how do things come to be what they are. That is an incredibly important question.

So you are applying it to a kind of world of formation and someone like Rupert Sheldrake would be a great….

TM: Evolution of Evolution – Sheldrake, that was about 20 years ago, but absolutely.

LW: His idea of “morphogenetic fields.’ How do the same cells containing the same DNA ‘know’ to become a nose, while others become a finger. OK, but the point is– these are questions that are still undecided, even unexplored.

So what you’re doing is exploring them. You’re an architect and you want to bring them as kinds of gifts into the real world, so that we can experience them. Your Shanghai [Giant] project begins to suggest that we actually can use these ideas of truth and beauty to create a world, an actual world, a world we can live in. I see the people active in the spaces, swimming, laughing, playing….

TM: But that’s a leap, these new models we’re making are conceptual territories. Like the last one I’ve shown you.

By the way, I’ve been doing this with one person in my office very quietly. The drawings and study models keep showing up on the walls, and it’s really fascinating– the office keeps looking at the walls saying, ‘What’s going on?’

LW: (laughs)

TM: Finally I’ve brought in the key characters I work with and we talked about the drawings and we’re using them as a broad direction that we are aspiring to. The drawings are setting up more specific notions of desire, let’s say.

Desire precedes everything we do, right?

LW: Of course.

TM: It’s trying to give us something more grounded in organization.

LW: I think you’re looking for a way to proceed towards a profoundly meaningful architecture. Beyond style; beyond any kind of idea of beauty or ugliness—

You are looking for a way to move forward with architecture. And of course you’re going to go to strange places. These models are already strange places because we haven’t seen them before.

But whether they have any applicability to architecture is the question.

However, your Shanghai project does begin to show that your way of thinking and working may have a broader impact. I think your book on urbanism, which I guess is….(Thom shows Lebbeus his book)….Ah, there it is!

TM: Two more months and its out!

LW: OK. I’m not sure how well it will argue—

TM: This is more formal. That’s one part of my world (in reference to his latest work). This is another part of my world ( in reference to his latest book on urbanism).

(laughs) I’m very stretched out right now. I’m trying to hang on to all these different pieces!

A NEW WAY

LW: Your message is really a philosophical message to architects. You’re trying to show us how we can build cities and break out of the old modes of urban planning and urban design.

And even thinking about or imagining cities that we have had for the past few hundred years, you’re offering a new way. I don’t know anyone else that’s done that today. Maybe someone will say Colin Rowe. OK—Collage City, but this goes far, far beyond Collage City and any urban theory of Corbusier or anyone else.

Now—how do you state your case? Your publications, your lectures—but I think it’s still something people will have a hard time approaching because they look at these and I say, ‘Hey, wow they are so amazing, however, these are arbitrary artistic constructions, the guy is a brilliant.’ Whatever. People want to put it in the mold of something already known.

What you’re trying to explain with Combinatory Urbanism, your book, is part of a systematic, philosophical, bigger picture. That is what philosophy is, systematic thinking, and you’re doing it.

TM: If you’re exploring just the level of organizational types because that’s usually what we do—we organize the world and we literally concretize it. We bring a certain order. That order is a response to how we locate ourselves in the world in philosophical terms—in the total sense; all the disciplines….

I’m looking for…or I am challenging…or I am myself searching for what that means with those organizational forms. I am looking for something that I see as more contemporary and that is connected to the 21^st century thinking and it seems as though it’s moving from the mechanical to the biological. There is a thrust that is becoming clear to us in terms of where we look for our ideas, right? We are paralleling in terms of the modern notion of who we are.

I’m looking for something that is discursive, that is understandable, ihat doesn’t depend totally on personal facility, meaning it’s private—because these are collective projects. I work with another person that is actually drawing the specific nature of the model.

And I would have said that the formation of these are first and foremost the operational strategy, which is the most powerful thing. Then, after that, it’s some combination of my critique; my development of that process and my engagement with the person actually mechanically putting them together. So it is a very complicated, already collective process of even how they come together and it’s not by me at all.

LW: Well, that brings up another question….

TM: I’m changing personalities and actually seeing where the personality fits in—and it’s less than you would think, strangely enough.

It’s more about the critique of where they’re going (in reference to a drawing / model).

Each one of these has taken a couple weeks and we go through many, many reiterations to find the one we think is working and I could define the rules in terms of differentiation. For each one of these, there is a discourse.

LW: So, any iteration won’t do. There are some iterations that are better than others?

TM: That is still a messy territory because again I look at this and there is no notion—they are a messy dynamic—and they operate on just about an infinite scale and if I actually look at the thousands of specific engagements going on here, there could be, as far as I know, an infinite number of solutions.

That is another question I am asking—in terms of specificity, is there a single rule? I say no, it is incredibly relaxed. But then I’m saying with program, building a Giant (the Shanghai campus)  instead of having a very fixed program. I started my career looking at symmetries, the kind of collage with Lawrence House.

Everything was gauged on a certain form. If anything was moved—it would be Kahn vs. Le Corbusier.

At Exeter, he’s screwed. He has a strategy that is absolutely impossible to do within reality.

And he’s stuck with the symmetry and so one corner is a stair and the other is a stair and a closet, you know, that kind of thing—impossible to solve.

Corbusier early on figured that part of the infrastructural piece was fixed and then there were other elements that were lax and loose and they followed his language—such as the stair.

There was a relaxedness that allowed him flexibility in the reality of human engagement that requires change.

In the Giant project, people can make all kinds of changes—I don’t even care. We just move it around—it’s open and flexible. I’m not depending on any fixed idea of form, which no longer makes any sense in a world like ours that’s operating in a completely different sense of time than ever before. We’re undergoing continual change in our architecture. if you are looking for an organizational type, it needs a type that allows for a flexibility that is not to the detriment of the final artistic demand of the project.

So Giant very much says that. I can move things around and will it be the same project? Yes. Would it be different in a literal sense? Of course. But if I move these things I have a huge flexibility that allows me to go in the same broad direction.

LW: Let me ask you a question with the subject of collaboration with these constructions—these models. How do you factor in, or how do you consider social issues that impact the city in your methodology—in your process? Because I am sure that’s a question that will be asked by people that start to say; ‘city’, they will then ask, ‘well what about the rich and the poor, what about social injustice, what about…’

TM: Architecture can’t answer those questions—that’s early modernism. I have no belief that architecture can solve those problems. Those are not architectural problems—those are political, social and cultural problems.

It’s an interesting question at this very moment in time because as we’ve shifted our agreement with the basic notion that starts with empathy and an agreement of what society should be and what this country should look like in economic, social and cultural terms. That agreement has shifted radically since the 1980’s, say, since Reagan. We are now approaching an economic disparity closer to Guatemala and there’s somehow a comfort with that. As an architect, this is something I am extremely interested in but I cannot solve that problem.

In fact in today’s world as you know, as architects, if you are of that ilk that are still part of the middle of the 20^th century as an ideal, you’re kind of fucked.

I’ve done one project with social housing and that’s in Spain where that is still a problem and they still engage in that issue. But that is not a problem of the US., it starts at a political level, it’s not an architectural problem. it’s definitely a problem that architecture can engage with and participate in, but it’s not an architectural problem.

LW: Your work, let’s just say that the ideas—I’m just being the devil’s advocate again—let’s just say the ideas that you have been talking about, this Combinatory Urbanism and these different systems that get integrated, they will impact people’s lives—hugely. Any urban shift, any change in the way things relate to each other opens public space; landscape; nature; housing; private spaces; administrative spaces, all of these have an impact on how people live, right? There’s no doubt.

So is it possible, that in the future your approach exhibits, not only in the models—and your approach to the models that I would call exploratory urban constructions, but also to projects like Giant—If they were applied to broader urban conditions could more people participate in the process?

TM: Absolutely, it sets up a frame work that is both more fluid than I’m talking about and it sets up one that’s interested in complexities that can deal with multiple constituencies—I thought you were going someplace else…

LW: You got the drift of my question right?

TM: Absolutely, I thought you were going to go somewhere else.

MATERIALISM IS WANING

There was an interesting article that I caught a couple of days ago in the New York Times it was David Brooks discussing the shift taking place in the young generation—that there is a complete shift going on in the materialistic demands of our generation. And what is taking place with the facebook and the google generation, is that they’re realizing—and he’s justifying the lower standard of living taking place with the next generation—that it’s actually OK.

It’s a really interesting argument that they’re moving out of the materialist mode that all of us have accepted and they’re moving into an information and quality of life mode. I read it on a plane and I was tired, but I have it in my briefcase now and I will go back home and read it—but the discussion is going to be great news for intelligence in general and for artists and architects because the members of the new generation are going to be more and more interested in—and they have more room to explore—their interests and intelligences. They’re not just collecting things and they need access to information.  They both have more time and they’re defining the quality of their life not by material things, but by the access to things that interest them; things that expand them in human terms—a really interesting argument, right?

Instead of everyone going, ‘oh dear, the sky is falling and we don’t get what our parents get’. Instead, they’re questioning, ‘what does ‘get’ mean’. Does that mean only these material objects? No.

It’s actually a kind of relief to be out of this materialistic system that is hopeless.

LW: More people are saying, “I’m burdened by too many credit card payments to pay for all this shit, you know?”

TM: Yes – and it actually frees you for something more interesting, that’s good news isn’t it?

LW: It could be—

TM: But meaning that the potential, from our point of view, is that they’re going to be able to live a more creative life versus being burdened.

LW: Now we get to the idea of education. The whole education system and including our mass media; that is—part of the people’s education is what they see on TV and now on the internet—pretty much has established materialism and consumerism as a standard of the good life.

So, it’s only through education of younger people that they’re going to understand what you’re talking about, which is that a good life doesn’t require all these material possessions. It actually has more to do with the time that you want to spend doing the things that matter to you and that you care about. Not the time you spend earning the money to buy those material things.

TM: Or doing a job you hate, just to have the objects—

LW: Because our generation, certainly many people in our generation, took jobs for big corporations that paid them very well and they could buy all those things. But they hated their job, they didn’t get to read, they didn’t get to play around with paints. They didn’t get any of that time because they were devoted to earning money to pay for the possessions, so we know that…

TM: And the huge, good news is that it changes from status to enhancement, right?

LW: OK, so all of this has a huge social implication, a changing of social values and it starts with a younger generation; it doesn’t start with our generation. People in our generation or even people in their 40’s or 50’s are going to still be stuck in that old syndrome, most people.

So, it’s a process. Now I’m intrigued by your idea of urbanism. You’re not satisfied to make this a kind of artistic process by which you can produce masterpieces of art or of architecture. You have the aspiration for this to mean something for everyone. You talk about cities, and they are everyone, every social class—every category of human being. So your ambition for this to mean something for cities seems to be an incredibly significant part to what you want to achieve. How do you want to go about doing that? How do you hope to have an impact on the growth of cities?

TM: I guess at that level it’s going to be quite different. I’m quite the pessimist or realist.

You know we just came out with this urban book and we just did another project in Qatar, a competition—let me tell you the Qatar story real quickly.

We were up against Rem and Grimshaw and it’s a huge piece of land next to an airport that’s three miles long. They gave us a program– the stuff of a city etc. We did a study of Doha and it’s pocketed with empty space, it has a 6 month summer of 120 degrees (f). There was a question of should there be a city there? Number one– it would be the same issues of Phoenix or Tucson; and why they’re growing and if they’re sustainable at all—will they make economic and ecologic sense in 50 years from now?

The assumption could be no and it wouldn’t take long to prove that these are odd places to be building large cities and the fastest growing cities. We looked at this and decided that we need to base our project on certain agreements. The first agreement that we made was that we’re going to contain the city and we’re not going to continue the growth. And they’re in the middle of building huge infrastructure, subways and things…

With the subways you want to know where you will be 50-100 years from now because they’re expensive to maintain and if you can build half the subways it seems like it would make more sense. So our discussion is, why don’t you contain the city and have more growth then you would need for 50-100 years and that will be the first assumption. We looked at our piece of land and said, well we wouldn’t even build there.

So in the beginning our response to the competition, which we are getting paid for and we’re going against two good architects, is we are challenging the a priori notion of the whole project. Why would you even assume that we’re building here? We came up with a scheme and we’re pushing all the developed part that can be condensed to a third of the whole site. We pushed it to the water and we took the whole site and said, well what do we want to use it for?

We came up with an idea for hydroponics—a huge, huge scale of produce production and went to work with a whole team and created a system where we can produce 75% of all the produce for the country.

LW: Amazing.

TM: These are very practical problems. I’m interested in large scale problems of policy and complexity.

We then realized we might have—I’m going to know in a couple of weeks—presented to the wrong group because they’re architects and urban people—they just wanted to look for a plan, which both Rem and Grimshaw gave them.

I am interested in another level of first-principle stuff and in some way these are very, very limited aspirations and they’re in some way provocations. We did the same thing in New Orleans; we said why don’t you just abandon the lowlands and move them. We did an economic study again with RAND that it’s cheaper to do that then to build a levee. It gave them all kinds of reasons, economic, social, etc.

These are very real problems but they’re at the macro-scale and they require big thinking and that’s not where we are at this time in history. We’re in an incremental time in history.

I’m kind of disappointed and astonished with what’s going on with the current [Obama] administration. Saying ‘thinking out of the box’—we know what ‘thinking out of the box’ really means. I don’t want to be bullshitting about ‘thinking out of the box’. That’s what I do for a living, right?

LW: (laughs. Bullshitting or thinking out of….

TM: So, I’m going to take you at your word when you say ‘thinking out of the box’. I say, OK—I got it, let’s go for it, right? And it’s precisely needed at this time in history. We have to change radically. It is such an interesting time.

There was an article in the New York Times about…

LW: You have to finish your sentence. You have to change radically, what?

TM: It’s the perfect time for radical change in how we deal with basic problems such as city- making, if they are going to be economically, ecologically and culturally sustainable. It’s that simple.

You can’t open a paper today that’s not discussing the fascination about where we are—and we’re in this middle space where these huge changes are taking place socially, economically and politically.

There was an article in the Times on people that check Caucasian, Black, Asian- other. Did you read that?

LW: Yeah, the census.

TM: Instead of having other, they have Irish, Mexican, Puerto Rican– so you’re checking multiple boxes.

And different governments have different check boxes, so you don’t always get the same check boxes.

The discussion was, this is a completely irrelevant means of information in the way we live today and especially in this country which is made up of heterogeneity. It’s the culture that invented the global culture, and you cannot say that about China, Japan, etc.

But this is a country that bases its essence on our discovery, our invention of the global culture and has been since the beginning of the first explorers.

Those types of issues keep appearing in everything that you talk about today. We are in this place of having to redefine and reconfigure the basic notion of who we are at every level and of course with architecture. City-making is especially part of that conversation. We have to completely reconfigure how we deal with problems. Nobody really wants or is interested in having that conversation today.

LW: Well I think they are. But I think they’re afraid of it. I think many people in our field are, but I think the public is as well. They’re afraid of it because they themselves don’t have the answer and they don’t see too many people trying to get the answer, so it’s a question of avoidance.

Here is an architect, you and your colleagues’ firm, Morphosis—a collaborative, that is approaching this and I think it’s significant. Whether any of what you are doing makes any sense at all will have to be judged by many people. But the very fact that you are doing it suggests that it’s worth the discussion.

So, your new book is published and will be out, It needs to be read. Whether this book reaches its audience, we’ll have to see. I think the audience is architects. Architects need to discuss these issues that you raise. It’s not to say yes or no to what you think. It’s more to deal with the issues you are raising by your work.

So, I think in the big picture, the strongest thing you are doing is raising the very issue about what principles we are going to operate on in the creation of these mega-cities that are growing over night, on our planet as the population expands exponentially.

We’re not just talking about adjusting a few boulevards in Paris or London. We’re talking about building cities that are growing very quickly.

TM: And the project we were looking at—your Light Pavilion project with Steven Holl in China—if I remember right, that’s a three-million sf. project. A single project, by a single architect done over a short period of time and I’m interested in the complexities; spatial and organizational complexities you could bring to that problem which are quite mimetic of the historic city. Maybe more the pre-modern city actually, that is loaded with the more organic fabric, which represents a richer differentiation that took place with the universalization process of modernism which was interested in stripping away—In fact I am interested in the exact opposite; in putting back all of the idiosyncratic, all the specific, the accidents, the unpredicted.

LW: The accidental?

TM: They are the human, I would say. They give us this endless occupation with the complexity of the city over time developed by many, many people.

The most complex construction of the human character possible is the city, and then we’re talking within design terms, within urban terms, within social and cultural terms.

And of course we’re right in the middle of it. Here in New York we’re in a sea that’s endless in its possibilities.

LW: Yes, but our city, New York is slow and small compared to cities in China or South America that are expanding literally overnight into the mega-millions because of migration. Or, in Africa, you look at cities like Lagos that are just expanding over night by literally the millions and mostly end up being slums because there is no thinking on the part of the authorities, the government, the planning agencies, about how they will exist.

TM: But you look at China and Shenzhen. That’s a 20-year-old city, a fishing port that now has somewhere between 12 and 20 million people—I’m not sure—who knows? It developed in a completely ad hoc way. There is no structure. It just happened.

LW: In the best of all possible worlds the planning agencies, the authorities who govern the land and how it’s going to be used, have a system of law and of government in China. If they had a strategy; if they adopted just as a scenario, your strategy, right? Let’s just say they adopted something that you had offered as an overall strategy as Combinatory Urbanism—

Then as a principle the city would become something different than an add-on or endless accumulation of random buildings; there would be a process, or how you put it—an organic process.

So, that’s the possible potential impact of the kind of thinking that you are proposing for cities. It would be very easy for people to just look at your work and say, “It’s just amazing, or awful, Thom Mayne stuff.’

But it’s your desire to push it further into the realm of an urbanism that would involve many. That makes it extremely dangerous, controversial, and hopeful for me. I believe in what you’re doing in the conceptual sense, but not everyone will, and this then is the battle to be won.

Recorded February 17, 2011

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Ever hear of Thomas Edison? Well, I would hope so, considering he was the greatest American inventor, ever. Ok, how about Henry Ford? If your answer is ‘yes,’ it is no doubt because of his giant automobile plants worldwide, but he, too, was a great inventor, most notably of the ‘assembly line.’ So, how about Rube Goldberg? No? Well, no big surprise. Goldberg was also a great inventor, but not in the same way as the others—he invented what should be called absurd machines, that is, devices that performed the simplest tasks in the most complicated ways, making them commentaries on and critiques of machine technology that, at the time he was making his work, was transforming both the human and natural worlds.

Goldberg’s preferred medium of publication was the cartoon. His work appeared in daily newspapers throughout the U.S., reaching millions of people on a daily or weekly basis, providing them with laughter, to be sure, but also subversively undermining the credibility of new technology that business interests were working hard to sell, literally, to the American masses. His not-so-distant cousin was the Murphy who formulated Laws such as “if something can go wrong, it will.” He was a pessimist in the guise of an optimist, believing, it seems, that his inventions were a boon to humankind and that they could actually work—not so different from his optimistic counterparts in business and industry.

There is one aspect of his inventions that remains in advance of most technological devices today: their integration of the artificial and the natural. In many of his machines singing birds or random gusts of wind work together with levers, pulleys, and clocks to produce a desired effect, mixing chance with mechanical certainty, indeterminacy with predictability. Philosophically speaking, he achieved a higher level of invention well worth striving for today.

LW

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(above) Computer enhanced photo of sub-atomic particle collision in a linear accelerator’s ‘bubble chamber’.

The interplay between science and art is fascinating but ill-defined. Does science produce a kind of art almost incidentally, for example the images of sub-atomic particles colliding in a linear accelerator? They certainly look like art—abstract and evocative. But doesn’t a work of art have to be created with an intention to be so? If not, then any interesting image would be art and that would disturb the existing social system of values that insists that art be created by artists and science by scientists.

Not to digress too far into such questions, but several times in the last century this system has been challenged by artists themselves. Most notably, the Futurists proclaimed the cacaphony of factories and of the noisy machines inhabiting the streets to be the truest forms of modern music. The Dadaists likewise proclaimed ordinary objects like urinals and hat racks to be sculptures, which they called “readymades.” These and other similar redefinitions of art were based on a belief that the modern age was grounded in the commonplace and the everyday, and not in the narrow, over-cultivated tastes of a social elite. Together with this was the belief—or the hope—that machine technology and industrial mass production were liberators of humankind, and were creating a great new phase of human history, which needed its unique artistic expressions.

Meanwhile, back in the science laboratory, say, a very particular one called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a giant machine under the border of France and Switzerland built to hurl protons at each other at extreme velocities, producing collisions that reveal the very smallest and highest energy sub-atomic particles. scientists study computer imagery to interpret, or understand, the most fundamental realities of the physical world. From that understanding new technologies will emerge, by which we humans will interact with the natural world and, so to speak, with ourselves. The LHC is, in short, an important source of new knowledge and will have a significant place in our history and—to the extent that we influence our world—the history of the planet.

My point here concerns the role of imagery in the creation of knowledge. The imagery of the LHC is computer generated: largely, arrays of numbers. The patterns recurring in these arrays are mathematical, in that they can be converted to algebraic expressions, and at the same time visual, in that their structure can be converted to logical expressions, much as, say, a painting by Leonardo Da Vinci. These ‘critical’ expressions are primarily verbal and, being in a common mode, contribute to shaping our cultural values.

However, apart from the direct output of the LHC, which can only be interpreted by specialists, the physical presence of the machine is expressive. The underground spaces it occupies, the tectonics of the machine itself, the iconic impact of its geometry, each and all are part of an aesthetic that is as much a part of our visual, hence cultural, sensibility as the streamlining of airplanes and the uniformity of mass-production was to an earlier generation. Visual artists such as Jonathan Feldschuh, whose paintings appear below, are interpreting in the traditional art media the very untraditional world of the LHC in order to give all of us access to it. His paintings combine the literal and the abstract, the representational and the symbolic in a needed synthesis of the known and the as-yet-unknown, or even the ultimately unknowable realities that lure us on.

LW

(below) Paintings by Jonathan Feldschuh related to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC):

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All photos are by Manta Weihermann/Steven Holl Architects.

LW

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(below) May, 30, 2012. Two of the structural cores of the illuminated end beams are welded into place.

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Steel tubes for the secondary structural system, prepared for assembly and placement:

(below) May 28, 2012. The construction scaffolding has been removed. The first of three structural cores of illuminated end beams is being raised into place. The structural steel stringers for stairs and platforms are being completed:

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(below) May 22, 2012. Secondary tubular structural system being installed among steel stringers for stairs and platforms:

(below) May 16, 2012. Welders working on the structural steel stringers for stairs and platforms:

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(below) April 14. 2012. Construction scaffolding in the space of the Light Pavilion, with safety net:

(below) April 10, 2012. Construction scaffolding in the space of the Light Pavilion. completed:

(below) April 5, 2012. Construction scaffolding is being put in place within the space of the Light Pavilion:

(below) March 28, 2012. The structural steel cores of the three illuminated horizontal beams that will support the glass and steel platforms have been placed:

Views from inside the space of the Light Pavilion:

View of the Light Pavilion space from one of the other buildings defining what will become the CapitaLand Raffles City public space:

Look for updates to this post as construction proceeds.

(below)  March 27, 2012. Two more structural steel cores are in place. Already it is evident that the illuminated columns are not placed in a “riot” of angles, but form a direction and flow, dynamically animating the Light Pavilion space within the Cartesian frame of the CapitaLand Raffles City buildings:

Above photo by Manta Weihermann/Steven Holl Architects.

(below) March 26, 2012. Erection of the structural steel cores of the illuminated columns has begun. The Light Pavilion site as seen from the CapitaLand Raffles City plaza:

The site from the plaza, with the first structural cores in place:

View from inside the Light Pavilion space:

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Look for updates to this post as construction proceeds.

A recent news article by Fred Bernstein in Architectural Record.

(below) March 19, 2012. The structural steel cores of the illuminated  columns, which will be encased in polycarbonate ‘sleeves’ are fabricated and on the site. Steven Holl,  the architect of the CapitaLand Raffles City complex is at the center of this photo:

The structural steel cores are visible in cross-section here. Erection of this structural steel is the next step and is due for completion in the next two or three weeks.

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(below) Original concept drawing by LW of the illuminated column:

(below) Developed design of the illuminated column, in collaboration with Christoph a Kumpusch:

TO BE CONTINUED. Check this post for updates over the next weeks.

OF NOTE: Article provokes a storm of criticism of the Light Pavilion, CapitaLand Raffles City, and their architects. See Comments section following the article.