Financial Obelisks: on the return of the monumental

Federico Campagna — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 12:04:45 +0000

A new age of monument-making is on its way. In this short article I will try to explain the geo-political, social and symbolic reasons for the (coming) renaissance of monuments as a means for political domination.

Preface: Eiffel Towers

When the first design of the Eiffel Tower was produced in 1884, France had just emerged from one of its bleakest periods. After the defeat against Germany in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, and the wave of civil revolts that originated from the Paris Commune of 1871, the French Nation needed to prove itself again as a believable power in the eyes of the world. The times were fluid and dangerous, and the European balance of forces was being reassessed. France had to show itself as a reliable, stable, united political and economic entity – and the 1889 Exposition Universelle provided a perfect opportunity for such a display of solidity and power.

In October 2008, when the Mayor of London Boris Johnson and Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell agreed that ‘something extra’ was needed to celebrate the Olympics, the country had just begun to sink into the whirlpool of economic recession. When Anish Kapoor’s ArcelorMittal Orbit project was selected on 31st March 2010, the country had just admitted to the world to have entered its first double-dip recession since 1975, when Britain had to beg the IMF for rescue funding. The international credibility of the old Kingdom and of its Capital City-State was in peril, and immediate measures were required to show that stability, as well as power, was still part of the character of mighty Albion. What better way of achieving this, than investing on a monumental, non-functional artefact, such as Kapoor’s reinterpretation of the Eiffel Tower?

Proposal for a Landscape Architecture in Advance of the Disintegration of Human Civilization

Robert Prouse — Tue, 01 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

"30/40 years ago we were still debating about what the future would be; Communist, Fascist, Capitalist, whatever...Today nobody even debates these issues, we all silently accept global capitalism is here to stay. On the other hand we are obsessed with cosmic catastrophes; the whole of life on earth disintegrating because of some virus, because of an asteroid hitting the earth and so on...
So the paradox is that it is much easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a much more modest radical change in capitalism"

through europe - architecture

Financial Obelisks: on the return of the monumental

Proposal for a Landscape Architecture in Advance of the Disintegration of Human Civilization