Arca+ on monumental architecture: cult concrete giant

Berlin pelvis | They are incredibly large, they attract thousands of people – and yet they are unlikely to attract attention in the architectural discourses of the Western world. Shrines, temples, pilgrimage and sections of events; In short: monumental architects in which mass rituals seem archaic.

Now dedicated Ark+A magazine for architecture and urbanism, this typology is the publication. Its name “Miracles about the modern world” sounds quite paradoxical. In the end, modernity and enlightenment embodied in it have just begun to demonstrate this world.

The magazine submits a research project with the same name at the Vienna Technological University, headed by architects Anna Libya Frilis and Pir Paolo Tamborelli. In the introductory text, Tamborelli declares that initially we are talking about the study of modern miracles.

Las -Vegasa training

As in the book “Training in Las Vegas”, published in 1972. Deniz Scott Brown and Robert Venturi gave the architecture of garbage in a deserted city and destroyed the applicable set of modern rules without ornament. Two main criteria: in (construction) surprises they make large crowds “inexplicable”, and they were built after 1753, when the “essay-architecture” of Mark Antuin Laudie provided a theoretical substitute with the protective “Urshutta”.

Rationality was a prerequisite, in architecture the form was to strictly follow the function. This dogma of modernity continues to this day, especially in architectural criticism. Nevertheless, there are more and more monuments, buildings and landscapes, which are not only useful, but also offer space for ritual and cult.

50 examples of this can be found in the journal. Nevertheless, this list can be continued at will, because miracles are ubiquitous: US presidential leaders on Mount Rashmore, who every year form the epicenter of the Sturgis motorcycle, a Hindu pilgrimage place in Coala Lumpur or beer Zelet in Munh -Octoberfest, which was created every year since 2018.

Community Constitution

They are all nearby. The central task of architecture becomes visible in them, which, according to the thesis, lost from the field of view, according to the thesis, in its reduction: the constitution of the community. “Miracles” were built to reflect the balance of forces and social norms, according to which they were created – and embody collective values.

The places and the course of the rites that make sense for them are set out in a journal with short essays and chronology. Drawings are trying to understand as the issue of assessment with the constant linen forces that are physically accessible. Sober handling of miracles is a method that should not be torn by a strapel of geopolitical complicated and hegemonic attributes.

Anna Libya Frilis describes this in her dizzying research by Mansudae Art Studio. The studio produces colossal mega -statui in North Korea and uses a visual language, which is still known from Stalinist propaganda. For this, he receives international orders. The monument of the African Renaissance in Dakar with its heroic figures was also developed in North Korea, with a height of 50 meters, it forms one of the largest statues on the African continent.

Cycle Pictures from Georgia

It is also worth reading: Memories of the theoretician of the architectural theorist of Vladimir the recently deceased Georgian-Russian sculptor Surabe Zereteli. His “Chronicle of Georgia” in a survey, near the capital of Tbilis, is a collection of a monumental coat resembling Stonehenge. Her cycle with pictures shows the ancient history of the Caucasus, his kings, his early Christianity, his cult of the saint. The gloomy work of Zereteli is considered a biting commentary on the Georgian Russian relations, which were still expressed during the Soviet Union.

Remocent photographs of the photographer: inside Giovanna Silva and Grigory Sokolinsky in the magazine Show Show, as well as the everyday life of these rooms, colorful, giant, dirty and complete contradictions. The presented places put collective desires and the constitution of their society, open almost naive. These architectures claim the superiority of religion or culture, they create affiliation. You can also become terrible.