Memorial Day & Washington Memorials

My parents' generation fought the war that made the world safe for democracy, without complaint. The attack on Pearl Harbor came during my father's senior year in college. He left to join the Navy 3 months before graduating. Would my generation do the same?

One of the main designers involved in the creation of Seaside was the son of a Colombian admiral. The Seaside he helped design was a small town with shacks typical of the old "Redneck Riviera." When he came back for the first time 10 years later and saw the PostModern wonderland that was built instead, he famously said, "This is not the nation that won the Battle of Midway."

I've been in Washington for the weekend, where the new World War II Memorial was dedicated this weekend by President Bush, what seemed like hundreds of thousands of World War II veterans and even more non-veterans. After all the talk (it's taken more than 20 years to plan), I had to go see it for myself.

Most of the debate has been about a) whether or not there should be a memorial in the center of the mall, and b) the Classical nature of the winning design. The architectural establishment, of course, argued Giedion–like that the design should be "of our time," meaning abstract and intellectual.

So what's it like in person? In a nutshell, the parti is fine: both the plan and section work well, and it's appropriate for the millions of individuals that won World War II to share the mall with Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. It even says something about the way our democracy developed from the elite republic of the Founding Fathers to the mass democracy of 20th century.

The architect of the WW II Memorial, Friedrich St. Florian, is a Modernist who clearly taught himself what Classicism he knows, and the architecture would be better if he'd had some Classical training. His Modernist biases make him think that abstract is better. But unlike a 20th century Classicist like Edwin Lutyens, who knew all the rules and therefore how to break them, Friedrich St. Florian abstracts Classicism to the point of clunkiness rather than simplicity. More detail would make more contrast in the light and shadow, one of the prime elements of Classical beauty. And I'm skeptical of a very loud fountain and pool as such a prominent element in a humid climate like Washington's.

On my way from the WWII Memorial to the Vietnam Memorial, I passed a simple tempietto designed as a memorial to those from the District of Columbia who died in World War II. It's off to one side, in a small clearing in the woods, and it was clearly built decades ago without all the debate and expense behind the new WW II memorial. It is also much more beautiful, because it was designed by a competent Classicist. The large memorial is fine in conception, but in the hands of a better designer, it would be more beautiful.

After 50 years of Modernist education, many architects have the problem that they confuse the conception of a project with its execution. This emphasis on conception, combined with the emphasis on so–called unprecedented invention, make's it difficult to judge the quality of the execution. When there are no rules, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

The Vietnam Memorial by Maya Lin is conceptually and emotionally powerful, but it falls down in some of the details. Like the way the grass above the stone wall dies, because Lin's concept needed minimal details. And the Korean Memorial, in which the designer borrowed some of Lin's ideas, moves over into kitsch when the designer makes the memorial less minimal.

A Classical design has rules and principles that can analysed and used. The result is that both the average and the best are usually better than the corresponding average and best improvisations of Modernism. Average Modernism is bad, as in the Korean Memorial. And even the best Modernism, like the Vietnam Memorial, can have the problem of the concept blinding the designer to some of the details, because the idea is more important than the experience.

In architectural circles today, the Vietnam Memorial is the sine qua non of memorial design, to the degree that the jury for the World Trade Center memorial, which included Maya Lin, chose the design that was most like the conceptual sketch Lin had published in the New York Times. And then forced the designer to pair with a landscape architect who made the execution of the design more the way that Lin would have done it.

This new conceptual paradigm can be emotionally powerful, but its palate is limited. Traditional, transcendent beauty is only allowed at the abstract level like the proportions. At the same time, an emphasis on mundane details is practically mandatory. A common feature of the majority of recent memorial designs is the use a prominent element to doggedly show the number who died: not only are there 2,173 benches to represent 2,173 dead, for example, but the number 2,173 becomes so material and central to the concept, that there is little subtlety or transcendence. And the result is more often the Korean Memorial than the Vietnam Memorial.

Even in the Vietnam Memorial, many Vietnam veterans found that the conceptual elegance didn't speak to their experience and memories, and the traditional sculptor Frederick Hart was hired to make a statue of 3 GI's standing near Lin's memorial. The architectural establishment's emphasis on the Style Wars and abstract conceptions, limits both Modernist and Classical memorials. The Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, great Classical works of the 2oth century, show how much more can be done.

Photo credits: Don Ripper (Latoff Inc.) /
American Battle Monuments Commission.