An Institutional Shift. The End of Monuments and Monofunctionality?
(2022) Institutions and the City: The Role of Architecture — ISBN: [978-3-03860-293-4], p. 192-209, published
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- Abstract
- In the past, the monumental character of institutions left its mark on the city, the institutions serving as landmarks and symbols in the urban space. The neoclassical period reorganized the city along major lines such as the Royal Route in Brussels, an urban course punctuated by various institutional buildings. These buildings departed from conventional forms by their colossal size and a style that sought to legitimize itself by drawing on antiquity. The architecture of institutions has regularly made use of these attributes to stand out and to transcend the more superficial needs of daily life. Driven by a desire for recognition, this act of transcendence has led designs to be exaggerated to the point of monumentality. Paradoxically, while Western society is preserving more and more monuments, it is creating fewer and fewer of them. Régis Debray understood this well when he wrote that society could almost use ‘yes to the monumental; no to the monument’ as its slogan.¹ The monument whose purpose is to collect traces (relegere) and connect individuals (religare) makes it possible to maintain links between generations and therefore a collective identity. However, in a society where the individual and the economy take precedence over all else, this sense of obligation towards such ‘capital beings’ as the Nation, Humanity, the Republic and the Sacred, among others, has disappeared. This has led to the disappearance of the votive monument.
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Citations
Ledent, G., & Vandernoot, C. (2022). An Institutional Shift. The End of Monuments and Monofunctionality? In Gérald Ledent, Cécile Vandernoot (ed.), Institutions and the City: The Role of Architecture (p. p. 192-209). Park Books. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/233696