Ideas of Monumentality in Architecture

Monuments are human landmarks which men have created as symbols for their ideals, for their aims, and for their actions. They are intended to outlive the period which originated them, and constitute a heritage for future generations. As such, they form a link between the past and the future.
—José Luis Sert, Siegfried Giedion and Fernand Léger, Nine Points on Monumentality (1943)

Therefore, when we build, let us think that we build for ever. Let it not be for present delight, nor for present use alone; let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say as they look upon the labour and wrought substance of them, “See! this our fathers did for us.”
—John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849)

… the Greek temple was conceived not as a purely human gesture in the landscape but as the body of a god who, however, was the embodiment of a certain kind of potential action or state of being.
—Vincent Scully, Modern Architecture: The Architecture of Democracy (1974)

Of what is past, or passing, or to come

In this article we consider the concept of monumentality as applied to architecture, and its role in the planning and design of urban spaces. The term monumentality is used by different writers with different connotations and different emphases, and so lacks a single, commonly accepted definition; yet it has wide currency in architectural theory and criticism, and it also has important socio-political ramifications.

The function of a monument is indicated by the derivation of the word from the Latin monere (to remind). In the public sphere this is seen in memorial structures such as cenotaphs, and in shrines to heroes and great events, often serving as venues for solemn civic and religious ceremonies[1]. The range is indicated by the Cenotaph in Martin Place, Sydney; the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC; and the London Monument, a massive Doric column raised soon after the Great Fire of 1666, with an overtly political edge expressed in an inscription (removed in 1830) blaming that catastrophe on a Popish plot.

Beyond the immediate functions of memorialisation—of connection with the past, and projection into the future—monumentality has become a term of broader approbation, applied to structures of all kinds that are seen as pinnacles of the art of building, and as representing the cultures from which they have arisen. These two elements are clearly linked, since in general it is only through excellent design that an effective representation of public values can be achieved.

Four main qualities are commonly associated with monumental buildings: a sense of permanence, or of proceeding from a remote past; an embedding of the building within a particular landscape or urban setting; an assertion of imposing effect or strength; and a projection of public values and political authority. It is the combination of these qualities that is of particular interest to us. Our aims are to explore some sources of architectural thinking with regard to the monuments in the civic sphere, and to elucidate the role of architecture in marking the focal points of public life.

The memorial function

As indicated above, a monument serves, at least in an original sense of the word, to make a connection with the past. The connection can be direct, by way of the inscription on a tombstone, or through sculpted figures on a cenotaph. Yet how effective can this be? Why, after all, should words carved in stone remind us more strongly of the person concerned than the same words in a book? And in what sense can we be reminded of a person whom we never met, or an event which we never witnessed? We can understand the urge to keep memory alive, but how effective can a monument be in those terms? How clearly is the memorial intention transmitted to the maker, and then to contemporary and future witnesses? Shelley’s “Ozymandias” may be read as an essay on such questions, insisting that the sculptor “well those passions read / Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things”; while highlighting the irony of the despot’s claim, “Look on my works ye mighty, and despair!”

Yet not all monuments, and few monumental buildings, are directly readable in these ways: their memorial impacts owe much more to allegory than to direct reference, and it must be conceded that such impacts are diffuse. If the Statue of Liberty originated as a monument to American independence and the freeing of the slaves, it took an allegorical form—a lady with a lamp, so to speak—whose meaning is not easy to explain with any precision, and whose traditional symbolic function, of bidding welcome to immigrants arriving in New York Harbor, seems now very uncertain. The shifting of meaning over time, and the tensions between memorialisation and communal comfort, have been addressed directly in memorials to the murdered Jews of Europe[2], and recent controversies over figures and events of the Civil Rights movement in the American South[3].

Given the sorts of imprecision outlined above, what is the power of a monument? It appears that monuments can transport one to a world apart from the everyday: a world of dreams, of thoughts of other times and other places. Sometimes a special focus is suggested for those thoughts, as in a necropolis or war memorial. Sometimes, however, the power of a monument lies more broadly in its capacity to suggest the depths of human time; and here, we suggest, lies the power of the Classical tradition in architecture.

For in that tradition a Doric colonnade, its entablature, its sibling colonnades, arcades and so on, partake of the extended Classical family, deep-rooted in memory. And hence, to put a building under the management (or “control” as John Summerson puts it[4]) of the Classical orders is to bring it within an imaginative realm, hazy as it may be, within which we can think of our history as a living world, in which we have a place amongst our antecedents and our heroes. We might suppose that the same process would apply to other architectural traditions (Gothic or Islamic, for example). Yet what is left when tradition itself comes into question?

Themes and principles

Until a few hundred years ago, it was widely accepted amongst architects in the Western tradition that monumentality could be realised through traditional means, through conformity with conventional precepts regarding the use of materials, decorative elements and formal precedents. But that consensus increasingly came under question, giving way to a search for new ways of thinking about buildings[5].

Outlined below are some of the outcomes of that search. Although these principles have sometimes been propounded without specific reference to a civic context, it has long been generally accepted that grand public buildings and monuments are the main canvas for the full development of architectural possibility[6]. That assumption was maintained also by Adolf Loos (1870–1933), one of the Modern movement’s most witty and incisive exponents:

A work of art is a private matter for the artist, a building is not … Only a tiny part of architecture comes under art: monuments. Everything else, everything that serves some practical purpose, should be ejected from the realm of art. — Adolf Loos 1910, Architecture; Vienna: Neue Freie Presse. Trans. at http://thecharnelhouse.org/2014/03/17/someone-is-buried-here-adolf-loos-on-architecture-and-death/

Reference to origins. The search for underlying principles led many architects to study the sources of the Western tradition, in the Greek temple (seen as a petrification of a primitive timber hut), in the engineering feats of the Romans, or in the medieval cathedrals. While such endeavours sometimes carried a banner of rationalism (for example in the writings of Viollet-le-Duc and Choisy), they were underpinned by a belief that “pure” or “essential” forms would visibly connect a building with an ancient tradition.

In a similar vein, the great teacher and architect Louis Kahn (1901–74) saw the ancient exemplars as encoding crucial evidence—the traces of the master masons—that indicate the original character and dignity of their culture. The temples at Paestum in Southern Italy were for him sites of recurrent pilgrimage, and he would say to his students, “Reflect on that great event in architecture when the walls parted and the columns came.”

Empathy. The use of the human body as an empathetic model has been central to classical and neo-classical ideals of monumentality. The Roman writer Vitruvius was apparently the first to expound the derivation of proportions and measurements from the body, and this theme was given graphical expression in the “Vitruvian man” of Leonardo da Vinci. An overt connection with architecture was made by Leonardo’s contemporary Francesco di Giorgio, who devised church plans modelled on the human body.

The values of empathy—of the presence of body metaphors in our perception of buildings, with the latent image of “a man standing upright”—were developed subsequently by C.R. Cockerell (see especially Peter Kohane’s recent exposition)[7] and by Geoffrey Scott. Scott emphasised the way in which buildings are experienced as quasi-human presences: “Architecture, to communicate the vital values of the spirit, must appear organic like the body.”[8] The empathetic ideal has found expression also in some of the best architecture of the twentieth century, notably that of Alvar Aalto, Louis Kahn and Le Corbusier. It appears to be central also to Roger Scruton’s recent writings in defence of the classical tradition[9].

The life within. The concept of empathy implies the idea of a building as, in some poetic sense, a living thing. This has clear affinities with the idea of an “organic” architecture, in which building forms are inspired by the natural world[10]. The organic impulse was central for the Art Nouveau of the late nineteenth century, for Gaudí, and for the interwar German Expressionist architects—Mendelsohn, Poelzig, Scharoun, Häring. With Frank Lloyd Wright, “organic architecture” was developed extensively through the use of biomorphic forms (such as spirals and tree- or shell-like structures), and in works envisaged as integral parts of their landscape.

Authenticity. A further, more abstract theme of architectural theory since the beginnings of the Modern movement is the idea that a building should be manifestly constituted of the materials and structures that make it up, without embellishment. This focus on authenticity brings to mind Lionel Trilling’s discussion of authenticity and sincerity as aspects of literary style[11]. To be authentic is to be true to oneself at any cost, while sincerity is considered rather a social virtue. Transposed to the realm of architecture, sincerity might be considered to correspond with decorum in the deployment of conventional symbols, and in fitting a building seamlessly into its urban setting; authenticity, on the other hand, emphasises the uniqueness of the work, the sense that it is, above all, itself.

Imposing a presence. If a building is seen to have within it a spark of a life, how does it assert its presence? An imposing presence is one of the defining marks of monumentality, and the means to achieve this have been understood—at least by architects—for many centuries. Monumental structures are often very large, but an effect of commanding size may also derive more subtly from a disturbance of the viewer’s perception of scale. For example, doors, windows, staircases and so on—conventional clues to scale—may be sized not to their usual functional dimensions, but to some larger order (in Alberti’s church of San Andrea in Mantua, for example, and Michelangelo’s Palazzo dei Conservatori in Rome), as if the building were inhabited by giants rather than mere mortals. Much the same approach is used in Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation in Marseilles, through the use of double-height balconies on the building’s main facades, and in the large parabolic arches in the loggia of Roy Grounds’s Shine Dome in Canberra. Similarly, conventional cues may be hidden or played down, as in the fortress-like facade of Grounds’s National Gallery in Melbourne.

In the cases mentioned above, grandeur is sought through the suggestion that the building is inhabited by larger-than-life beings. A perceptual disturbance may work also in the opposite direction. For example, Le Corbusier’s church at Ronchamp has a facade in which the small, deeply-recessed windows seem to suggest that the building is inhabited by troglodytic dwarfs, as well as by the giants implied by the massive cornices of the roof.

The sharing of meaning

As we have seen, monumentality can involve various kinds of metaphorical or allusive reference: a building puts us in mind of something, it transports us to another world, and so on. The power of this allusiveness is exemplified by Norberg-Schultz’s assertion of a miraculous transformation, analogous to the transubstantiation of water and wine at the mass:

[The European Gothic cathedral] was the heavens of contemporary man; upon entering it one entered heaven. The large sun window starts to radiate heavenly light when one enters the church. The large “baldachines” which form the interior space undoubtedly symbolize the heavens, and the glittering stained- glass windows … [correspond] to the description of heaven in contemporary literature. — C. Norberg-Schultz 1968, Intentions in architecture, p.124; Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Symbolism is the subject of a variety of interpretations and analyses. We propose here merely to indicate the range of symbolic representation in architectural form (not merely in surface decoration). A first group of symbolic or quasi-symbolic forms has particular relevance to the preceding discussions of memorial functions and empathy. These forms are tectonic elements which have become embedded in the languages of architecture: the timber components of the primeval Doric hut, idealised in the Greek orders; the arch, dome, tunnel vaulting and other engineering forms of Roman architecture; and similarly, the aediculae, arches, vaulting and buttresses of Gothic architecture. These elements can promote engagement between viewer and building, so as to intensify the sense of the building as itself, a particular member of the family of human habitation, located on a particular site.

Second, some forms and spatial ensembles seem to have some primeval relevance to the human condition: the phallus, the womb, the forest, the cave; and religious symbols such as the cross and the mandala. Third are mystical or quasi-mystical patterns of various kinds: the elementary geometrical forms deployed by Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn; the axial geometries that give orientation and order to cities such as Canberra. A fourth category comprises chimerical or quasi-biological organisms: the sphinx-like form of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, Mendelsohn’s Einstein Tower in Potsdam, the shells of the Sydney Opera House.

Achievement and crises

The subject of monumentality has assumed a variety of aspects in the history of architectural thought in Western countries over the past 250 years. We suggest that the pattern of this thought has been marked by four main crises, characterised in each case by an ebbing—conscious or not—in the confidence with which architects have addressed the task of civic representation. Although these crises are described here in historical sequence, their causes are interconnected and they are gradually unfolding and partially concurrent phenomena, rather than discrete events.

The first crisis, commencing around the mid-eighteenth century, was the sapping of the architectural consensus over common conventions and symbol systems. Of course those conventions themselves had evolved over time: the new element was their deployment in a proliferating eclectic variety across an expanding range of building types—factories, railway stations, and so on—which introduced a relativistic taint, compounded by the scepticism expressed by Enlightenment writers towards the very institutions for which architectural grandeur was expected.

One result of that first crisis was the emergence of several streams of avant-garde thought which sought new ways of building, and were at times affiliated with radical elements in the politics of the time. In Europe, this thinking led on to a second crisis, described by Sert, Giedion and Léger in their “Nine Points” of 1943. The abandonment of conventional classical forms had deprived architecture of the means through which monumentality was traditionally sought. In addition, the urgent pursuit of decent alternatives to the slums and sweatshops of the nineteenth century had led to a focus on the efficient deployment of resources in housing and other utilitarian buildings, to the neglect of public buildings. Furthermore—and this is not quite explicit in the “Nine Points”—a widely-shared desire to place architecture at the service of progressive governments had been baffled by the rise of authoritarian regimes in Russia, Germany and elsewhere.

In the mainstream, meanwhile, the lush variety of late-nineteenth-century eclecticism was succeeded by a still varied, yet more sober and thoughtful range of approaches. Conventional architectural motifs were still used, usually in simplified forms, sometimes with references to local traditions or with overtly nationalistic overtones, notably in Scandinavian countries, Italy and the US (leading exponents include Eliel Saarinen, Gunnar Asplund and Paul Phillipe Cret). Australian examples of such work include Bruce Dellit’s Anzac War Memorial in Sydney, and Hudson and Wardrop’s Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, both completed in 1934. Also notable are the late works of Sir Edwin Lutyens, especially his war memorials and his Capitol buildings in New Delhi: based on classical and Palladian models, these memorials and grand public buildings yet convey the hand of a wonderfully original design intellect.

The third crisis arose from disillusionment with monumentality itself, discredited by the aggressive use of buildings to project overwhelming state power in the building programs of authoritarian regimes, as seen in Speer’s schemes for Berlin, Mussolini’s EUR in Rome (1938–43), and Franco’s Valley of the Fallen (1940–58). In the USSR, as Frampton puts it, after the death of Lenin, the Party “sensed that the people were incapable of responding to the abstract aesthetics of modern architecture”,[12] and settled upon a so-called Social Realism characterised by gigantic scale, grandiloquent gestures and theatrical ornamentation, exemplified by Boris Iofan’s project for the Palace of the Soviets (1934).

A further, and continuing, crisis is the consequence of a shift away from grandeur as an architectural quality and a diminution in the role of civic architecture. These shifts are bound up with changes in urban planning priorities, seen especially in the emphasis on convenience of travel by car. That emphasis has led to a downgrading of the ways in which public buildings are traditionally approached and apprehended, that is, slowly, from far off, and without anxiety over traffic, parking and so on. Parliament House in Canberra, for example, is cut off from its urban surroundings by major freeways; and when a building is thus stranded on a traffic island, the public can hardly be expected to invest it with the kind of dignity that Scully attributed to the Greek temples.

Also contributing to the crisis are political elements; in particular, the diminished value invested in all but a small inner circle of public institutions is seen in governments’ willingness to dispose of public properties, which has cast a pall of impermanence over the public sphere. Allied with these developments has been the rise of non-physical means—notably the broadcast media and the internet—by which public institutions assert their presence in the world.

The Sydney Opera House

The Sydney Opera House illustrates some of the qualities and themes associated with monumental buildings. As a sculptural presence it seems to mediate between the dramatic landscape of water, rock, remnant bushland and fine-grained suburban habitation, as opposed to the coarse-grained density of the commercial city centre just behind it. The size of the building is difficult to gauge from a distance; the form is in some enigmatic way “organic”; the massive substructure, with its vast flights of steps, recalls precedents such as the Mayan temples[13]; while the shells—the primary visible components—are formed as sections of a sphere, a template used by architects from Roman times onwards.

It is indisputable that the Opera House is highly successful as an urban landmark, convivially shared by Sydneysiders and visitors. Yet what of its representative or symbolic function? The building appears in Charles Jencks’s postmodern aesthetics as a prime case of multivalence, allowing a range of possible allusions (to seashells, sails of yachts, nun’s cornettes, dishes in a rack)[14]; while it also reveals its contents, in the elementary sense that the Concert Hall and Opera Theatre visibly comprise the main distinct components of the superstructure.

Yet the Opera House is also popularly referred to as a symbol or “icon” of Sydney. In a sense this is true, in that—like the Harbour Bridge—the Opera House is distinctive in form, instantly recognisable as belonging to Sydney, and hence can serve as an emblem of the city. This emblematic role—the building as “trademark”—is however scarcely relevant to the symbolic or monumental qualities of the building.

A further and more interesting claim is that the Opera House is a symbol of Australia or of our culture; yet how is this possible? How can a building represent something as abstract as a culture, if not—as in the past—by overt use of the symbols of that culture? What is it about being Australian that could be represented in a building? We are a great sporting nation, yet is there any tradition of building that could express this aspect of our national culture? The Aboriginal cultures are ancient yet have developed no usable architectural tradition; we inherit fine British traditions of literature, governance, and so on, yet what could be distinctively Australian about them? And similarly, if the Opera House itself marks a milestone in our cultural development, how does this relate to the architecture of the building?

Monuments and cities

The view of monumentality developed so far in this article has focused on the memorial and symbolic potentialities of individual buildings. We shall now consider briefly what monumentality might mean in a broader public context, with reference to the form and structure of cities.

Every part of a city—not only the central administrative or ceremonial precincts—has a public aspect to the extent that it gives form and meaning to the places and spaces around which the city is built[15]. Notable in this respect are the patterns of buildings, streets and squares which have comprised the fine tissue of most European cities until modern times. Sometimes those local patterns have emerged from a mosaic of local custom and tradition, as in the role of parishes as administrative units in medieval Venice. In contrast to these “organic” patterns are the more artificial patterns and ensembles imposed with directly urbanistic intent, as seen in the remaking of Paris in the nineteenth century, where the boulevards established major axes, linking other streets, squares and quays, and where strict rules applied to the dimensions and materials of housing, so as to give a grand aspect to the streets themselves.

This conception of individual buildings as elements within a larger whole is exemplified also in the works of John Wood, father and son, responsible respectively for the Circus (1754–68) and Royal Crescent (1767­–74) at Bath, and in the subsequent development of squares and terraces in London through the nineteenth century. The underlying idea was to construct from ordinary housing units the suggestion of a larger and more splendid entity, such as the facade of a palace, which might seem to be inhabited by higher beings, a trope very close to the use of scale to evoke grandeur in individual civic buildings, as discussed earlier.

The idea of elevating housing to monumental, city-shaping levels was taken up again by many architects in the course of the past 150 years, for example by Le Corbusier, as seen in his Unité d’Habitation at Marseilles (1947–52). Of this building Scully has written:

The high space of each apartment looks out towards the mountains and the sea, and it is in relation to the mountains and the sea that the building as a whole should be seen. This is the larger, Hellenic environment that it creates. So perceived, it is a humanist building, as we empathetically associate ourselves with it, in the contrasting landscape, as a standing body analogous to our own.

Scully, op. cit., p. 44.

In the same vein are a number of distinctive projects with urbanistic goals. Notable among these are Ralph Erskine’s Byker Wall in Newcastle, UK (1969–82), an array of housing up to ten storeys high, that turns its back on a major highway for sound protection and to give a sense of enclosure to an established neighbourhood within the city. This has affinities with Louis Kahn’s proposal (1956) for a set of massive car-parking structures, reminiscent of medieval fortifications, around the old centre city of Philadelphia. The Grande Arche at La Défense in Paris (1985–89) is a gigantic office building in the form of a triumphal arch, terminating a major axis. Projects like these are distinct from the megastructures proposed by several architects during the 1960s and 1970s, for which the motivations were technological rather than urbanistic.[16]

Most cities develop in piecemeal fashion, without close aesthetic guidance. It is generally only major cities and capitals, such as Canberra or Paris, that provide opportunities for planning on a grand public scale. How far beyond that should a quality of splendour or grandeur be sought in a project that merely houses people or their places of work?

Large-scale housing projects represent a response to insistent demands for higher urban densities: they can offer decent and dignified alternatives to traditional housing patterns, and should not be judged by the meanness and vulgarities common in recent practice. Yet they can hardly be considered a universal norm, for several reasons. First, the implied model of high-density living is of doubtful sustainability in human, and perhaps even economic terms (see, for example, the writings of Leon Krier[17] and Christopher Alexander[18]). Second, although an individual project may play a positive part—perhaps simply as a landmark—in giving form to a city, if the same thing is attempted indiscriminately, the result is visual and spatial incoherence, akin to the mass of products competing for attention on supermarket shelves.

Finally, there is a fundamental confusion in the flaunting of private aspirations within the realm of public urban space, which is traditionally dominated by civic monuments and collective patterns. This is emphasised in Loos’s remarks on Viennese housing in the 1890s:

Whenever I walk along the Ring, I always feel as if a modern Potemkin had wanted to make somebody believe he had been transported into a city of aristocrats … Viennese landlords were delighted with the idea of owning a mansion, and the tenants were equally pleased to be able to live in one.

Loos, op. cit.

You must remember this

In this article we have discussed what we see as a common property of the buildings that mark the power and achievements of our civilisation, a property with both aesthetic and socio-political elements. We have noted some means through which monumentality has been invoked, although we would not presume to dictate a template for architects, whose modes of thought when engaged in design rarely follow any programmatic pattern. Yet we hope that this brief survey may help to guide an appreciation of architectural work—on paper or in the flesh—and hence may inform judgments regarding the built environment.

Imagine, for example, that we are involved in the instigation, preparation or adjudication of a project for a major public building of which some monumental quality is expected. Of course special attention may be directed here to symbols associated with the institution, the approaches to the building, its orientation, and its ceremonial usage.

Beyond these things, the building should be distinctive in relation to its landscape or urban setting. That is, the singular quality that we seek refers not to the building alone, but involves its alignment in the landscape and its functioning in relation to its neighbours. And the building itself must be not merely a piece of work in a particular vein, or an expression of a particular personality. To be monumental it must have a life of its own, as if visiting our time from ages past, like the uncanny sphinx referred to by Yeats in “The Second Coming”:

… somewhere, in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.