Monumentality and Monumental Spaces

6MONUMENTALITY AND MONUMENTAL SPACES

by Ahmed Helal

Collage of U.S. Monuments

For decades now, controversial discussions on the importance of legacies, and the meaning of public monuments and memorials are taking place worldwide. However, only recently, prompted by the recent public manifestation of dissent against the history of racism in the

U.S., many monuments, memorials, and public spaces have become much more ‘visible’ to the public eye.

Monuments are deeply rooted in navigating notions of power and patronage. Who has the agency to create them leverages the ability to mark spaces and shape references. The etymology of the word monument comes from the Latin derivative of monere, meaning, “something that reminds,” or “bring to (one’s) recollection a story.” The stories the monuments tell are significant as they shape our narratives and guide us towards the future, which raises a group of consequential questions about monumentality today: what are the narratives that we are shaping, reinforcing, and re-telling in our present that will also live in the future? What is the interplay between monumentality and the people? How do we create new monuments that are as diverse as we are? And not a mere representation of a single man on a horse elevated above us in a public space, or an ancient architectural edifice situated in a place as a dominant display of power and wealth. During the recent BLM protests, public spaces in New York City have been appropriated by the people to fulfill their true essence as spaces for the assertion of political and cultural rights. As people come together to fill the streets, parks, and squares of the city, questions about the intention behind the long-lasting colonialist statues/symbols occupying the public domain started to arise. One vivid and controversial example of that was the statue of former American President Theodore Roosevelt in front of the American Museum of Natural History. The statue was commissioned back in 1925 and it depicts Roosevelt on a horse with a native American man and an African American man on foot at his side. The monument has been criticized as being racist and became a cultural flashpoint. In June 2020, NYC’s Public Design Commission voted to remove it, calling it a depiction of subjugation and racial inferiority. This request was prompted by BLM protests. The Statue was moved on a long-term loan to The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential

Left: Protesters in front of the American Museum of Natural History in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. Photograph: Jeenah Moon/ Reuters Bottom: The removal in parallel with a close-up of the Theodore Roosevelt Equestrian Statue in front of the American Museum of Natural History on Central Park West entrance, June 22,2020. Timothy A. Clary/ AFP via Getty Images.

Work by Christo and Jeanne-Claude including the Wrapped Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II 1970, Wrapped Reichstag 1971-1995, The Floating Piers 2014-16, and L’ Arc De Triomphe, Wrapped 1961-2021.

Library in North Dakota. The library has said that it will seek gardens from indigenous and black communities to display the statue with a recontextualization that will help use it as a tool to study the very difficult colonial and racial history of America’s past. It’s imperative, given the cultural sensitivity of our time, that a discourse on the future of monuments and monumental spaces must take place, and the first question is: what do we do? How do we do the work in creating ‘new monuments’? The making of the new monument ought to be a place that encourages people to gather and exercise their culture. Although that is going to be a very different type of process, it may have the same result in terms of creating ways to embody cultures, to tell a story, and to communicate that in an ongoing way, which is ultimately the sort of purpose for monuments and monumental spaces. New monuments will have to change the narrative and even disrupt that of old monuments. The stories of new monuments ought to be part of a collective dialog and not merely about a specific figure or a power structure. The design approach of new monuments must be embedded in notions of celebration that all people can relate to. Today we don’t have a power structure that prescribes things, we have cultures, shared values, and ideologies that are much more important to document and celebrate now and in the future.

Case Study: Untermyer Park and Gardens: Monumentality and Public Space (Personal Project)

I have been heavily engaged with the subject of monumentality and monumental spaces for the past year. It was the focus of my thesis, which I developed during my architectural studio in Fall 2021 led by BKSK Partner, Julie Nelson who chose Untermyer Gardens as the site. What evoked my interest in taking on the subject of monumentality was the historical nature of the existing architecture of the given site. The Untermyer Gardens is an amalgam of historical styles such as ancient Greek and Roman, Indo-Persian, Mughal, New-Babylonian, and more. However, as I started thinking about my work, I was more interested in the owner of the property than the garden itself.

Samuel Untermeyer was an influential lawyer who had an agency to form and manipulate legislation. He was the first lawyer in America to earn a 1-million-dollar fee on a single case. His life encompassed the rise of industrial capitalism which he was heavily entangled with. He was involved in mergers of beer, copper, steel, and oil companies all of which were huge money-making deals for him as well as for his clients. His garden at Greystone was a host of politics and offered a place where he gets to display his wealth. Hence all the historical, monumental elements that were brought to highlight the latter, which makes the Untermeyer Garden a complex territory with embedded logics of power and patronage. The questions posed in the research phase of – how monuments in our future can become more representative of the community and not merely about glorifying a specific figure or a power structure – were the driving engine for this project. As a reaction to the site and the founder’s legacy, this proposal intended to allow a place for public gathering and discourse to infiltrate the site and transform it into a civic destination that brings about broader participation and draws a plurality of people to come, congregate, talk and learn about the history of power, politics, and place. l

Ahmed Helal is an architecture student at The Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York in New York City. He is in his last academic year and has been studying architecture for the past seven years between Cairo, London, Volos, and New York. He has studied in three different schools of architecture before The Spitzer School in NYC. He attended MSA University in Cairo, Egypt; Greenwich University in London, England; and the University of Thessaly in Volos, Greece. Ahmed has always been involved in pursuing architecture; outside the academic sphere, he participated in various architecture competitions, as well as practicing architecture as an intern at highly respected firms, including Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

Ahmed believes that architecture has the ability to change human behavior, and that architects have a duty to always put people first when they design. From the moment architects start to think about the layout of the space to the choice of material finishes, they must be conscious of how this process in its entirety can impact people’s health, mood, and productivity.

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