After the Maelstrom - Architecture, Collective Memory & the Battle of Verdun

AFTER THE MAELSTROM

Architecture, Collective Memory, and the Battle of Verdun

Tyler Pitt

Thesis, Spring 2022

Master of Architecture Boston Architectural College

About

Tyler is a Master of Architecture student at the Boston Architectural College. He completed his undergraduate studies with a Bachelor of Urban and Environmental Planning from the University of Virginia before working for several years at Hartman-Cox Architects in Washington D.C. Tyler worked at Goody Clancy as a designer while studying at the BAC. Upon completing his studies Tyler returned to Charlottesville, Virginia where he is a Project Architect at VMDO Architects. Tyler is passionate about sustainable design and the preservation and restoration of historic structures.

CONCEPT COLLECTIVE MEMORY & ARCHITECTURE

THESIS CONCEPT

This thesis studies architecture’s ability to preserve and enliven collective memory. As a society and culture we curate images, descriptions, and accounts of the past, forming collective memories that inform how we view our past and present. What we choose to remember refects our values and has a huge infuence on how we see ourselves as a society.

While we often shy away from memories of the past that are dark, disturbing or contrary to prevailing narratives these dark memories offer important lessons, often learned at enormous costs of blood and treasure. As we sanitize and smooth our past we are at risk of losing these memories and lessons they contain. As school curriculum are changed, books are burned, and is propaganda broadcast, architecture offers a unique and more permanent tool for the preservation of memory.

This thesis studies architectural typologies that are deeply linked with memory like museums, memorials, monuments and cemeteries in order to extract a series of strategies that are applicable to the preservation of memories of the past.

These design principles are then used to create a piece of architecture that embodies and strengthens the memory of the World War I Battle of Verdun, seeking to bring the memory of the battle back in to our collective conscious and illustrate the costs of industrialized war, offering an urgent and enduring plea for the end of war.

In addition to the particular architectural solution presented, this thesis seeks to create a more universal set of guidelines and best practices for the preservation of memory broadly.

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

- William Faulkner

What lessons can we learn from memory of the past?

The Trail of Tears Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade The War on Drugs

The American Civil War Internment of Japanese Americans

COLLECTIVE MEMORY

Society is built on the foundation of collective memory. How we as people and as a society choose to remember shapes our national identity, values, and outlook.

Collective memory is built over time through repetition of stories, images and tales. These memories often refect a certain viewpoint and may represent a monolithic interpretation of the past. As these memories are reinforced by their use in movies, art, songs, books, political speeches, and even architecture they weave themselves into our societies.

As a society we hang onto, embellish, or even fabricate memories to refect our current values, and reinforce our foundational myths. However, our collective memory is selective, malleable and ever changing. Memory of events that were once viewed as critically important fade away. It is this malleability that allows us to reconsider and reinterpret the past to construct new memories and parables that more honestly and fully represent our past and offer lessons for the future.

As an example, many Americans are engaged with the collective memory of the 1969 moon landing even if they were born decades after the event. The event is remembered with pride and patriotism. We recall images of as crowds staring skyward as a spaceship blasts off, a blue orb surrounded by vast blackness, crackling voices and grainy TV footage transmitted back across space from the moon’s surface, and the words of Neil Armstrong. We continue to

remember the moon landing as a symbol of nationalistic power, and the boundless potential of the American spirit. Of course this is memory is highly selective, narrow and edited, members of other cultures could remember the same events completely differently, or lack any memory of the moon landing whatsoever. Our collective memory of the moon landing is as much a product of our contemporary thought as it is of historical events.

ARCHITECTURE & MEMORY

The precedent analysis of memorials, museums, monuments and cemeteries detailed on the following pages was conducted to develop a series of architectural principles for the preservation of memory. The surveyed projects use different strategies to enliven the past and create architecture but all immerse visitors in the memory of the past.

BRION CEMETERY Carlo Scarpa BERLIN MEMORIAL TO THE MURDERED JEWS OF EUROPE Peter Eisenman

NATIONAL MEMORIAL TO PEACE & JUSTICE MASS Design Group

US HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM Pei Cobb Freed

911 MEMORIAL MUSEUM Snøhetta, David Brody Bond, & Handel Architects

9/11 Memorial & Museum

Architects: Snøhetta, David Brody Bond, Handel Architects

Location: New York, NY

Area: 100,000 sf museum, 350,000 sf plaza

Year Completed: 2014

The 9/11 Memorial Museum is unique in that it sits within, and below the footprint of the World Trade Centers. By descending into the earth, and emerging within this massive space the scale of the buildings, and the scale of the loss is made clear. By reusing pieces of the towers and through exposing the original slurry walls the project draws on the memory embedded in the site.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Architect: Pei Cobb Freed & Partners

Location: Washington D.C.

Area: 258,000 sf

Year Completed: 1993

Despite it’s prominent location near the Mall in Washington D.C. the USHMM uses industrial architecture forms and detailing to allude to the mechanized slaughter of the holocaust. By displaying thousands upon thousands of the same ordinary object like shoes or wedding rings the museum connects visitors personally to the stories of the victims, preserving their memory.

National Memorial for Peace & Justice

Architect: MASS Design Group

Location: Montgomery, Alabama

Area: 30,138 sf

Year Completed: 2018

At the National Memorial for Peace and Justice visitors enter the site and progress down a ramp where corten steel memorials hang suspended from a plane, at the bottom of the ramp these coffn shaped obelisks hang above your head like the sword of Damocles, creating a sense of unease and symbolizing the unresolved weight of racial injustice over America. The memorial also connects

to place and the past by collecting and displaying jars of soil from the sites of lynchings all across the country, displaying the scale and breadth of the memory.

Berlin Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

Architect: Peter Eisenman

Location: Berlin, Germany

Area: 204,000 sf

Year Completed: 2005

Envisioned as a “feld of otherness” Peter Eisenman’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe creates a vast feld of granite blocks spaced just wide enough apart for an individual to walk amongst them. The varying heights of the blocks create a maze-like quality as a visitor becomes disoriented and overwhelmed by the scale of the memorial as they are immersed in the scale of the memory of the holocaust.

Brion Cemetery

Architects: Carlo Scarpa

Location: San Vito d’Altivole, Italy

Area: 23,700 sf

Year Completed: 1972

Brion Cemetery Carlo Scarpa controls experience and commands attention through the careful framing of views, and the use or ornament and decoration to direct attention to important aspects of the project. The cemetery uses materials like concrete that weather and patina as they age, Scarpa noted that the work would get better over time, indicating a desire for the architecture to weather and hold on to the memory of the past.

DESIGN PRINCIPLES

This thesis seeks to employ a series of principles to design spaces that preserve and enliven memory of the past by creating architecture that elicits an empathetic instead of purely sympathetic response in visitors and promotes a deeper understanding of lessons from our past.

Through the study of the above precedents and other architectural projects deeply engaged with memory this project developed the following four principles to preserve and embed memory within architecture.

While these principles are considered individually, they can, and should be used in tandem within a single architectural moment to fully imbue the architecture with memory.

These four principles and their linkage with memory are detailed further on the following pages and serve as a fundamental backbone for the thesis and the architectural project it proposes.

Scale

Architecture can engage with memory through the use of scale, by creating large expansive spaces the reduce the scale of the individual while expanding the scale of the memory, or by using repetition to illustrate the scale of a memory that impacted many people.

By using architecture to physically represent large numbers a project can promote an understanding of events that are too large to comprehend in the abstract.

Authenticity

Often memorials and monuments use abstraction or symbolism to represent events that are dark or traumatic. However, if the goal of a project is to embody memory, abstraction and symbolism may be inadequate. Instead, by creating an architecture that shows faces, tells stories and features artifacts visitors can authentically engage with memory.

Allusion

Some museums or memorials attempt to make visitors engage with an event by creating the illusion of the past through immersive experiences using sets, audio/visual effects or virtual or augmented reality systems. This technique can have the unintended effect of making the visitor feel like they had truly experienced and emerged unscathed from a past event that in reality was so intense that it cannot be replicated.

Instead we should strive to create architecture that alludes to the physical conditions of the memory by recreating the spatial characteristics of the past without attempting to recreate the past itself. This approach allows us to place visitors in spaces that create the same feelings as the memory while remaining frmly grounded in the present.

Confrontation

We often try to avoid memories that make us uncomfortable, however if we want to preserve and enliven memory it is necessary to intentionally confront visitors with the past.

Using techniques like shaping circulation paths and arranging elements to force interactions between visitors and the memory can help to engage visitors with the past in a meaningful way.

Applying Design Principles

While the principles of scale, authenticity, allusion and confrontation are presented here individually they should be used in combination to have the greatest impact. Rather than using each principle to design a series of disparate elements this thesis recommends employing the principles in concert to immerse a visitor in memory.

It is also important to note that while helpful in embedding memory in architecture, these principles do not constitute a complete list of potential strategies, and they may be many other useful techniques better suited to a particular memory.

As a last note, this thesis intends these design principles not to function as universally applicable strategies but rather as principles that inform unique architectural strategies that are deeply involved with memory, history, site, culture, program and place.

Concept Model - Memory and Landscape

MEMORY & THE BATTLE OF VERDUN

The Battle of Verdun

The battle of Verdun was fought between France and Germany over the course of 300 days in 1916 throughout the hills and ravines of the area surrounding the French city of Verdun. The German army attacked at Verdun with the goal of seizing the hills and forts surrounding the city and baiting the French army in to a series of costly counterattacks, with the stated goal of “bleeding France white”. The battle of Verdun was designed as the world’s largest killing feld, and in that regard the battle was horrifcally successful. Over 305,000 French, German, and colonial soldiers died in the fghting with well over 750,000 total casualties. Verdun showed the world the terrible potential of industrialized war. The carnage was unimaginable, between 40 and 60 million artillery shells were fred on to an area of just 20 kilometers, transforming the landscape into a nightmarish wasteland.

Verdun offers us, in a distilled form, a shocking and sobering example of the costs of war. While the battle still holds immense importance to the French people, the memory of the horror of Verdun has faded from our collective consciousness. If instead of speaking fippantly about the prospects of war, or promoting glorifed and sanitized depictions of war, if we remembered Verdun, and took an unfinching look at the costs of industrialized war we would be less likely to repeat the costly mistakes of our ancestors.

The Human Cost of Verdun

The diagram below illustrates the scale of Verdun by laying out 305,000 circles representative of each life lost. Even reduced to a circle the scale and complexity is astounding. To understand Verdun we must simultaneously be able to zoom in and comprehend that each circle is in actuality a individual human being, full of complexity and unrealized dreams, and also be able to zoom out and realize that the memory of Verdun is made up of many thousands of personal losses.

The scale of death at Verdun creates unique challenges for our full comprehension of the calamity. Fundamentally we as humans have a very diffcult time visualizing and understanding large numbers. Architecture offers the opportunity to take the incomprehensible tragedy of Verdun and manifest it in physical form, allowing us to fully engage with such large memories at scale.

305,000 DEAD

Through the course of the battle the landscape of Verdun was transformed from lush felds, forests and villages into a hellish moonscape. Over the last century the shattered and devastated earth at Verdun has begun to heal, however the pockmarked undulating terrain still holds on to the faded memory of the battle.

Beyond historical and archeological interest, the landscape of Verdun offers a unique opportunity to reconnect with the memory of the battle through the scars still visible in the battered earth.

Shell holes pockmark the ground and hundreds of miles of degraded trenches and fortifcations still crisscross the scarred landscape. These ghostly traces create an eerie atmosphere as memory of the past sits just below the surface.

There is an inherent tension at Verdun between the beautiful verdant green felds and forests, and the crumbling remains of fortifcations and the memory of loss and horror embedded in the earth.

Memory and Landscape

At frst glance the landscape of Verdun is unremarkable. Satellite imagery shows forested hillsides, roads, a cemetery, and the remains of an old fort. However, by analyzing LiDAR data generously provided by the National Forests Offce of Verdun and the Regional Archeology Department of the Lorraine a very different picture emerges. By digitally denuding the landscape the remnants of trenches, fortifcations and millions of shell-holes are revealed, hidden beneath the foliage.

This thesis seeks to take advantage of this hidden memory embedded in the terrain and leverage it to amplify and enliven the memory of Verdun, shifting it back into our collective conscious.

LiDAR data courtesy of the National Forests Offce of Verdun and the Regional Archeology Department of Lorraine

Comparing historic images of the landscape with a rendered DTM it is astonishing that underneath the vegetation the battered earth is much the same as it was over a century ago. As the damage to the landscape endures, so does a physical manifestation of the memory of the battle.

SITE & CONTEXT

Site Vicinity

The city of Verdun sits on the banks of the River Meuse in the Lorraine region of eastern France. For centuries a series of fortifcations built in the surrounding hills protected France’s eastern fank. It was through these hills and ravines that the Battle of Verdun raged in 1916. The dashed lines on the map indicate the front lines of the battle from February to December 1916. Much of the area surrounding Verdun is now part of the Zone Rouge, or red zone, an area stretching across France and Belgium that remains so heavily polluted and strewn with unexploded ordnance and the bodies of the dead that no settlements are built in the area and access is limited.

Today Verdun is the center of many commemorative activities with hundreds of thousands visitors making the trip to walk the battlefeld, learn about the battle and visit the many commemorative sites and monuments.

Site Context

The Douaumont-Fleury area is a major existing site of commemoration. The site of some of the fercest fghting of the battle, Fort Douaumont, the largest and most important French fort, changed hands several times during the fghting. The Douaumont Ossuary and adjacent French Cemetery dominate the area and is surrounded by other memorials and monuments. To the west of the ossuary sits the Ouvrage de Thiaumont, an area of preserved battlefeld surrounding a small fortifcation.

The Douaumont Ossuary was constructed at the end of the war and was completed in 1932. The ossuary had three main purposes, frst as a fnal resting place for the remains of 130,000 unidentifed French and German dead. Alcoves were built in the foundations and were flled with the bones of the dead recovered from the surrounding area. Second, the ossuary served as a memorial and a place of healing and prayer, the building includes a large chapel and is deeply tied to Christianity, as evidenced by the religious motifs and detailing. Third, the ossuary stood as a symbol of the unbreakable French spirit, a nationalistic symbol of what was viewed as a glorious French resistance to German aggression.

Today, as the memory of Verdun fades from our collective conscious the need for healing, and the strength of nationalistic symbols has also declined. This thesis argues that in order to preserve the lessons of Verdun, and highlight the costs of industrialized war the memory of the battle has to be revived and reinterpreted.

Existing Landmarks

The Douaumont Ossuary sits high on a ridge line with commanding views of the surrounding area. The French cemetery stretches down the hill to the south. With 16,000 graves it is the largest French military cemetery from WWI. The area around the ossuary is dominated by a large gravel parking lot and has been cleared of any traces of the battle.

The remains of 130,000 unidentifed French and German dead are visible through small windows cut in to the north side of the vaulted walls of the ossuary.

Just to the west of the ossuary, blasted remnants of concrete bunkers, and shell holes flled with water dot the landscape around the Ouvrage de Thiaumont, so heavily devastated that the scars are still plainly visible today.

CONCEPT APPLICATION

Verdun Visitor Center

This thesis investigates an architectural intervention in the form of a visitor and mediation center that is imbued with the memory of Verdun, reorienting visitors and engaging them with the memory so they may see the landscape in a new light.

Core Principles & Formal Logics

This thesis utilizes four design principles derived from memorial architecture, scale, authenticity, allusion, and confrontation to create a piece of architecture that enlivens and amplifes the memory of the Battle of Verdun, and shifts the focus towards the costs of industrialized war. In this way the project seeks to bring Verdun, and its powerful lessons from the past back in to our collective consciousness.

The project studies the form and function of bunkers and applies their key considerations to its design. Bunkers are interesting in that they are often without an apparent front door, and are entered through a small passage or standalone structure. Their inherent heaviness creates an atmosphere that separates their inhabitants from the outside world, while their openings and gun ports create direct controlled views out over the landscape. Beyond simply alluding to the bunkers of WWI this project articulates an architecture that much like a bunker, uses heaviness to direct attention inward, while selectively creating openings to frame the landscape, and view the world, again.

Trenches, the quintessential element of the frst world war, have their own unique formal logic. Designed in a purely pragmatic manner, trenches often took jagged or angled forms in order to stop a single shell, or attacking enemy, from decimating the defenders inside. This sawtoothed form has the unintended consequence of creating disorientating and confrontational moments as one is constantly turning corners with no way of knowing what awaits around the bend. This project applies this formal logic to both the building structure and circulation, using hexagonal forms and pathways that continually confront the user with new moments, more deeply immersing them in the memory embedded in the architecture.

This project takes the design principles described above and arrays them along a prescribed path. By creating an architecture that promotes a single prescribed path it is possible to promote a consistent experience for all visitors.

Trenches & Structure

Derived from the form of trench systems this project uses hexagons, and 120 degree and 60 degree angles to create structures that not only allude to the spatial characteristics of trenches, but also create disorientating and confrontational situations to engage visitors with the architecture.

Trench System - WWI

Formal Logic of Trenches Building Form

Water, Collective Memory & The Prescribed Path

Water plays a key role in prescribing a path throughout the project. Running across the landscape and through the buildings it guides users visually and through its sound, while also tying to memory through symbolic uses. Further, once water becomes linked to memory it extends the reach of the architecture, creating connections to memory whenever water is encountered outside the walls of the project.

Water creating a path

Connection via sound

Gravitational flow

Connection to landscape beyond

Linkage of water and memory

Falling water attracts attention

Materials & Memory

This project explores the ways in which material can promote or emphasize memory. Materials are selected that age and weather, or maintain the imprint of their construction, or that show traces of the past. Material selection is also tied to the primary design principles. Materials can be leveraged to illustrate scale, allude to the spatial characteristics of a memory, or to highlight certain elements of a design.

CONCRETE COPPER HEMPCRETE CORTEN STEEL WOOD

EXPLORATION & DESIGN

Site Strategy

Before setting on a fnal approach this project examined four potential site strategies. The central concern of each strategy was determining how to interact with the existing structures and landscape. The Douaumont Ossuary has such a strong presence, and is a major existing center of commemoration, however the way it engages with the memory of Verdun to promote healing and memorialization while also proclaiming the glory of France conficts with the main goal of this thesis, to utilize the memory of Verdun to illustrate the costs of industrialized war. Several options sought to add this new perspective to the site by creating a new structure adjacent to the ossuary in order to reinterpret the context. Other options set back from the ossuary, siting on the edge between the cleared land surrounding the ossuary and the undisturbed areas of the battlefeld, creating opportunities to link to the past through the landscape. The undisturbed areas of the battlefeld are considered sacred ground, further complicating the myriad practical considerations related to building anything on the battlefeld itself, and highlighting the utility in building on the edge of the “cleared” area surrounding the ossuary.

In addition to proposing a new visitor center that promotes a new collective understanding of the lessons of Verdun, this thesis dramatically reorients the site surrounding the ossuary.

The expansive gravel parking lot is removed and the fattened land replanted and cut by a series of geometric depressions and berms that allude to the forms of shell holes and trenches. Priming a visitor to focus on the surrounding scarred landscape. Circulation paths weave around these disrupting elements, forcing you to look at and engage with the landscape. Paths converge at the inside corner of the ossuary and a trench is cut funneling you along a prescribed path down to the foundations of the ossuary, then back up again along a meandering route that crisscrosses a stream or water that acts as a guide across the landscape and to the architecture beyond.

Site Plan

As approached from the road to the west the visitor center sits in dialogue with, but is formally distinct from the ossuary, respecting the integrity of the existing building while providing a new space to rethink what Verdun means in the 21st century.

Reinterpreting the Ossuary

The idea of authenticity is critical to this thesis. In order to enliven and preserve a particular memory the symbolism and abstraction alone is not suffcient. Monuments only have meaning if you already have a working knowledge of what is being memorialized and why it matters. However, by showing faces, telling stories and engaging with authentic artifacts an event from the past can be renewed and brought back in to our collective conscious.

The Douaumont Ossuary contains one of the most powerful and shocking authentic memories of the battle imaginable in the form of the shattered remains of over 130,000 French and German dead entombed in the foundation. Currently small windows in the walls of the ossuary allow visitors to peer in and observe the piles of bones. This project proposes cutting a slot along the foundations of the ossuary, and reshaping circulation paths to push all visitors down into the earth where through large windows cut in the stone walls they are confronted by the bones of the dead, articulating with great power the scale of tragedy at Verdun and the fundamental brutality of industrialized war. The architecture recreates spatial characteristics of trenches, and areas of confnement and exposure to create an environment that is both somber and uncomfortable. This is appropriate as we should be made uncomfortable by the memory of Verdun, and the human capacity for violence that it symbolizes. Bearing witness is uncomfortable; however this discomfort is the cost we must collectively pay to retain diffcult lessons from the past. Discomfort is an emotion that this project purposefully leverages in order to create an empathetic response in visitors and generate deeper engagement with memory.

Entering the Earth

This thesis asserts that in order for one to be reoriented to experience the past in a new way, one must frst be disoriented. By separating the visitor from the outside world, creating indirect circulation paths, and reducing scale to focus attention on the event being investigated architecture can create lasting links to the past.

Recalling the formal logic of bunkers, the entrance to the Verdun Visitor Center is visually disjointed from the main building. A small concrete and glass head house sits in the landscape, clearly an entrance, but without a clear connection to the visitor center beyond. The rivulet of water that guides you across the landscape cuts across a plaza, and penetrates the building on axis, showing a connection between the structure and the water as part of a prescribed path. Inside the vestibule ramped passageways cut down into the earth, separating you from the outside world and focusing your attention on the descent into the unknown, alluding to the tunnels and fortifcations of Verdun. Skylights bring light from above, cutting through the darkness, and along with the ever present fow of water, guide you down into the earth. The walls of the passageway are covered with the inscribed names of those who died at Verdun, displaying the monumental scale of the tragedy.

This project utilizes the contrast between spaces of enclosure and spaces of openness to magnify the effects of the memory embedded in the architecture. Small spaces reduce scale, both to allude to the confned nature of trenches and bunkers, and also to create an intimate environment where visitors are placed in close proximity with the memory the architecture is trying to elevate. Large spaces create feelings of exposure and vulnerability while also reducing the scale of the individual and emphasizing the scale and weight of the memory.

Ground Floor Plan

Section at Entrance

Entrance Vestibule

Water and the Memory Well

The narrow passageway turns a sharp corner, as the rivulet of water terminates into the side of the passage, marking a point of transition. A low corridor leads out into a large atrium with light streaming down from the levels above. Water again fows down the corridor and across the atrium where it tumbles into an open shaft that cuts upward through the space. As you walk across the atrium you notice the faces of those who died at Verdun projected across the back of the shaft. In a moment of clarity the water takes on another level of meaning. Beyond a guide, leading you past the bones of the ossuary, down through the earth through passages covered in names of the dead, it becomes clear that the water is symbolic of the lifeblood of France and Germany, hundreds of thousands of souls poured ceaselessly and needlessly into the abyss that was Verdun. As you walk across the room the faces fade replacing each other again and again, authentically connecting to the memory of individuals while also articulating the sheer scale of loss.

Beyond its use as a way-fnding tool, water is used to engage a visitor’s senses. Visually the pools and rivulets of water play with the ideas of darkness, and loss that the architecture seeks to articulate. The smell of wet concrete and earth alludes to the spatial characteristics of bunkers and trenches, invoking subconscious empathetic response. The sound of falling water flls the building, emanating outward and creating connections to water and the memory it holds even when out of sight around a corner or in another room.

Ground Floor Plan

Memory Well

Building Section

Program & Memory, First Floor Spaces

This thesis seeks to create a piece of architecture that infuences and enlivens the past reinserting it into our collective memory. In order for this to happen beyond simply embedding memory in architecture this project, a large number of people of different walks of life and experiences must interact with the work. A few people visiting a site and thinking about the past does not impact collective memory. Affxing an unrelated but congruous program to the project gives it another reason to exist and expands the reach of the memory. Additionally, collective memory is pointed and curated. In order to infuence collective memory a project must have an attitude towards the past rather than just a neutral presentation of facts, and should create an empathetic response in visitors to begin to elevate the lessons of the past back into our collective conscious.

Progressing up a tight winding stairway from the ground foor the spaces on the frst foor are devoted both to the preservation of memory and to the main programmatic uses. The foor houses the information desk, seating areas, cafe and offce spaces needed by the visitor center in addition to the gallery, study and other spaces related to memory. The gallery is designed to confront, to force you to take an unfinching look at what happened at Verdun in order to articulate the incredible human capacity for violence. Paintings and photographs of the battle are arranged to contrast with each other and windows are strategically located to link the images of the past with the reality of war as illustrated by the cemetery and broken landscape outside. Within the gallery the circulation is uncertain, angled walls and narrow doorways force you to wind through the space and be continually exposed to images of the battle. This practice of confrontation and use of graphic authentic images is critical in enlivening a memory that makes us uncomfortable, we would rather suppress the memory of Verdun because it is painful. To retain the lessons of the past and understand the costs of industrialized war this architecture forces us to remember.

Program & Memory, Second Floor Spaces

For architecture to have a lasting impact on collective memory the experience created by the architecture must extend beyond its own walls and be constantly recalled. A successful project enlivens and reinvigorates a memory that is embodied in the architecture itself, then in turn projects that memory on the world beyond.

The lower levels of this project create spaces of heaviness and enclosure to focus on the memory of Verdun, immersing visitors in the memory and explaining why it is relevant to us today. As one progresses vertically through the building the architecture becomes lighter, the materials become more transparent and airy as the focus shifts outward to project the memory of Verdun out onto the landscape beyond.

The second foor holds another key programmatic space that acts as a draw generating more foot traffc and thus a greater level of engagement. A mediation center is designed to allow for the settlement of disputes, be they domestic, corporate or international. Meeting rooms and service spaces surround a main mediation center which sits on axis with the Douaumont Ossuary beyond. This project posits that by forcing visitors to engage with the memory of Verdun as they enter the site and process throughout the building, that architecture could have an impact on the outcome of negotiations held within the space, demonstrating the direct application of memory to impart sobering lessons from the past on the decisions of today.

Second Floor Plan

Mediation Center

Linking Present & Past

The spaces on the second foor and roof level are primarily concerned with linking the present and past and expanding the reach of memory beyond the walls of the building itself. In addition to the Mediation Center the second foor houses restrooms, a lobby space, an exterior terrace and an immersive memory exhibit called the Memory Projector.

A tight passage funnels visitors into the Memory Projector where you are once again cut off from the outside world as you enter the dark octagonal room. Panoramic images are projected on all the surrounding walls, immersing you in the memory of Verdun in 1916. As you gaze upon the projected images of a devastated battlefeld the images begin to fade and light starts to stream into the space from, what you now discover is an electrochromic glass storefront. Looking out now you are surrounded by the landscape beyond and realize that despite a century of regrowth you are looking at the exact same landscape that was projected on the walls moments before, creating a strong connection between the present and past. As you walk out from the Memory Projector onto the terrace the memory of Verdun follows you as you look out over the Ouvrage de Thiaumont you see the landscape in a new light, every indentation and scar now carries the memory of the past.

Memory Projector

Engaging with the Landscape

This project uses architecture as a primer, immersing visitors in the memory of Verdun so that when they leave the building and walk out into the battlefeld beyond they see the landscape in a new light and imbue it with another layer of meaning, extracting and engaging with the memory embedded in the shattered earth as they walk.

While any project that seeks to infuence collective memory must create experiences that expand beyond a given site, Verdun offers the unique and incredible opportunity to create an authentic and organic feedback loop between architecture, memory and landscape. This thesis seizes on this opportunity and sets circulation patterns along a prescribed path in order to reorient visitors and then push them out into the landscape beyond. This project fosters engagement with the landscape at varying scales. The rooftop makes the most of its position high on a ridge line, providing expansive views of the entire Verdun region, illustrating the scale of the confict. The terrace focuses ones gaze out over the Ouvrage de Thiaumont, tracing the scars of the earth and understanding the past of the site.

After exploring the Verdun Visitor Center you descend back to the frst foor and make your way out to walk through the battlefeld. A small vestibule shrinks the scale down again, creating a more intimate and close atmosphere. As you exit beneath the terrace above, your view is directed out on the landscape beyond. Aligning with the perspective of a soldier at Verdun you follow in their footsteps as you walk out to the Ouvrage de Thiaumont with a new understanding of what Verdun was, and what it means today.

Path to Ouvrage de Thiaumont

The notion of a prescribed path is critical to this thesis. As noted earlier the prescribed path plays an important role moving people from the site into the building, ensuring that memories that are diffcult to consider are not ignored by creating a single path that confronts visitors with the past, and by pushing visitors out into the landscape after their journey though the building.

Water plays a key role in creating this prescribed path. As a way-fnding device rivulets and pools of water direct visitors to and through the building. Water when combined with authentic images and artifacts from the past also takes on a symbolic meaning in the project, further enhancing the visitors understanding of the human cost of Verdun. The sound of falling water expands the reach of this element, creating connections and acting as a central force even when not visible. As one exits the building out into the landscape water returns again, falling from the terrace above, flling a pool and fowing out into the landscape beyond where it merges and becomes lost amongst the shell holes that are naturally perpetually flled with water. In this way even as the prescribed path dissolves once one re-enters the landscape, the connection between water and memory beings to link disparate locations and experiences. Whether you are looking at a stream in another path of the battlefeld or even a rivulet of water running down a street far away from Verdun, the connection forged between architecture, memory, and water creates moments where the memory of Verdun resurfaces, expanding the potential for the project to enliven memory and raise it back into our collective conscious.

CONCLUSIONS

Conclusions

This thesis set out to investigate the ways in which architecture can be used to infuence collective memory. This investigation has produced four main conclusions explored throughout the design process and summarized here. First, architecture can, and should be used to enliven and embody the memory of the past, especially memories that we tend to ignore or repress that when investigated allow us to view our past more honestly and provide lessons for our future.

Second, while certainly not exhaustive, the principles of scale, authenticity, allusion and confrontation can be utilized to physically embed memory into architecture, creating a building that holds on to the past and projects its lessons outward. Designing experiences to occur along a prescribed path helps to ensure that everyone engages with the memory in some manner and provides a link between disparate elements, allowing for a prevailing shared narrative to emerge.

Third, in order for memory to make its way into our collective conscious and begin to infuence our society broadly, it must be as present and relevant outside the walls of the project as within. At Verdun the surrounding landscape provides an incredible opportunity to link to memory through the scarred and pockmarked earth, a project in another location, or withdrawn from the site of a particular memory entirely will have to fnd another method to provide a link between the memory it seeks to elevate and the world beyond.

Fourth, a few people thinking about the past does not impact collective memory. In order for the past to be relevant to society as a whole it needs to be widely experienced, broadly shared, and constantly referenced. Pairing a memorializing function with an unrelated but compatible program allows for memory to meld with everyday life as people engage with with memory while visiting a project for unrelated reasons. Extending the reach of memory beyond those who purposefully seek it out creates the most promise for architecture to play an important role in preserving and enlivening the collective memory of the past.

Linking the past and present, and enlivening the memory of Verdun as to bear witness to the costs of industrialized war the project preserves the lessons of the past and offers an enduring and urgent plea for the end of war.

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13 - Image from: https://www.ushmm.org/

14 - Image from: https://www.ushmm.org/

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18 - Image from: https://www.massdesigngroup.org/work/design/national-memorial-peace-and-justice

19 - Image from: https://www.massdesigngroup.org/work/design/national-memorial-peace-and-justice 20 - Image from: https://www.massdesigngroup.org/work/design/national-memorial-peace-and-justice

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39 - Image from: http://greatwarproject.org/2016/03/07/the-longest-battle/

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49 - Image licensed from Alamy.com

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55 - Image from: https://www.verdun-douaumont.com/en/gallery/

56 - Image from: https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryPorn/comments/5pw8q7/ghastly_mementos_of_battle_at_verdun_a_pile_of/

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60 - Image from: http://www.festungsbauten.de/F/Verdun_Thiaumont.htm

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62 - Image from: http://www.festungsbauten.de/F/Verdun_Thiaumont.htm

63 - Image from: https://verdunmonsite.wordpress.com/de-1914-a-1916/ouvrages-fortifes/ouvrage-de-thiaumont/

64 - https://www.prints-online.com/battle-thiaumont-verdun-france-ww1-14126160.html

65 - Image licensed from Alamy.com

66 - Image from: http://www.festungsbauten.de/F/Verdun_Thiaumont.htm

67 - Image from: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/pictures-memorial-day-world-war-2-atlantic-wall-bunkers

68 - Image from: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/pictures-memorial-day-world-war-2-atlantic-wall-bunkers

69 - Image from: https://www.frieze.com/article/decline-and-fall

70 - Image from: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Traverse_(trench_warfare)

After the Maelstrom Architecture, Collective Memory and the Battle of Verdun

Tyler Pitt Thesis, Spring 2022 Master of Architecture Boston Architectural College