Perhaps we should begin by stressing that "memorial" and "monument" are not synonymous, interchangable words. Witold's treatment of them as such leads to the confusion that dominates his article.

We can erect monuments to any old thing, heroes, abstract concepts like deomcracy and justice, the surrounding city, the gods, whatever. As Sert, Leger, and Gideon defined themt, in a rather uncontroversial first point in their "Nine Points of Monumentality", "Monuments are human landmarks which men have created as symbols for their idelas, for their aims, and for their actions." Straight away, we have a problem in Witold's article, because Witold now wants monumnents that "gain [their] power from... engineering, rather than from symbolism." But isn't symbolism inherent to the very idea of the monument? Take the "mute symbol" of the Washington Monument. It is an obelisk, a historical form, whose historical associations were understood to correspond to a certain set of values in the 19th century. Or even take the Dublin Spire. What was the reason for putting a spiral around its base again? Oh right, its a symbol of Irish/Celtic cultural heritage.

Memorials, meanwhile, are a particular kind of monument They are architectural objects specifically designed for remembering the dead, a tragic event, etc. Often, they are at their best when they eschew the very qualities that we associate with the monumental,, as best exmplified by Maya Lin's Vietnam Vet's memorial, which as it burrowed into the ground was more of an anti-monument. Indeed, what may be appropriate architecture/sculpture for a run-of-the-mill monument, say something heroic, light, "uplifting", "inspiring", is inappropriate for commemorating a tragic event. Can you imagine this spire (which as Witold notes works in part because it contrasts with the horizontality of the city of Dublin), erected in lower Manhattan to commemorate the tragedy of Sept. 11th?

Witold is quick to jump on a starchitect for desigining buildings that loudly proclaim the genius of their maker and little else, but now he wants the monument to Sept. 11th to proclaim nothing but what a great engineering feat it is? He wants the memorial of a senseless terrorist attack to inspire and uplift? I thought that was what the Freedom Tower was for. The memorial was for remembering the dead.

I agree with his largest point: the Sept 11th memorial, like the entire site, is a complete bust at this point, but the Dublin spire is not a viable alternative. Its a cute rallying point for civic and nationalist pride, nothing more.

Indeed some memorials need not even be physical, if one were to take a Buddhist or even Unitarian approach. For an example of such a 9/11 memorial which is not "a monument" at all, physically, I urge you to visit the Slate's Poems Fray today and look for two threads that are 9/11 Memorials. One is by a Frayster named Mary Ann, the other by "Angel." The latter will lead you outside the Fray to an independent sound-enabled website of readings of poems for 9/11 accompanied by dramatic photography & slide shows; the former is a growing thread of read-only on-screen poems, written both by PoemsFraysters and other, more well-known poets. I think you will find both to be a most apt "memorial" to those we lost on 9/11 and afterwards. Although I do not always agree with Witold's comments and opinions, I am v. grateful for this Fray and for his presence here. He is one of the few architecture writers, along with Paul Goldberger, whom I find to be accessible to the lay, non-architect, reader.

The Dublin Spire was erected for the millenium. Or was supposed to be. Fraught with problems and delays, much like the WTC site, it was not erected until 2003. It was subject of much controversy in Ireland, and still is a but of many jokes, heard firsthand by me on a recent trip to Dublin.

'It's a cute rallying point for civic and nationalist pride, nothing more."

Perhaps you have considered our egocentric, ethnocentristic monuments and memorials here in Washington,DC. The Freedom Tower will follow in the same path. Or maybe, the "Temple" of Thomas Jefferson would better suit the purpose of the Freedom Tower. But regardless this is utter nonsense. You see what you want to see and understand what you choose to understand. We were attacked, we retaliated because of failed Mid-East policies. Failed policy is what many people will see when they look upon the the Freedom Tower, more a "Tower of Tyranny." Almost 3000 people died in the Twin Towers. That is less than the service men and women who have died so far Iraq. It is a fraction of the Iraqi people both soldiers and civillians who have died not to mention worldwide deaths from starvation, disease, genocide,etc. What are their memorials and monuments?

To quote Jefferson, "I have sworn on the alter of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

Oh darn it, I proved your point, "cute rallying point for civic and nationalist pride, nothing more."

Couldn't completely follow your argument, but you are right on one point. I should have put "freedom tower" in quotes, and cranked up the irony in my reference to it. The so-called freedom tower is a travesty of a buidling. When I look at it, I see a fortress of fear on the lower levels and corporate banality on the uper stories. My only point was that the functions of reference point for grief and uplift were gathered around two distinct objects: the memorial (sunken funerary) and the tower (reaching upwards, etc.), and I thought that to be appropriate. The forms those objects have taken are spectacularly terrible. But an abstract, contentless spirit pole cannot be a viable alternative. It is an inappropriate form for the memorial to take.

Regarding the memorials in DC, do their monumental, historicized forms refer back to Roman Imperialism or Roman Republicanism? Probably both, but to argue that they are simply wowee-zowee forms that draw people together, because they're really nifty-neato, which is the general impression I get of the spire, is either intellecutally dishonest or wilfully ignorant. Forms gain content through association, either through physical metaphor or through historical reference, or evolving public perception. There is a chance that the spire will gain content through the third avenue over time, but it eschews the second avenue, as a good modernist object should, and the physical metaphors are so blandly, generically, up-with-people, that at this point I feel justified in calling it a "cute rallying point for civic and nationalist pride, nothing more."

I am still trying to tease out your larger point in the first paragraph. Are you arguing that every person who dies should have a memorial? There are gravestones, shrines for the worship of ancestors, etc., etc. Generally its up to a person's family to do so. Should there be memorials to those who die of starvation, disease, and genocide? Yes, and there are. Regarding genocide, there are a number of memorials to those who died in German concentration camps, from (B)BPR's in Milan to Rachel Whiteread's in Vienna.

Generally its up to a community to deem an event significant and tragic enough that it should memorialized. So if you want more monuments to those who died of starvation and disease I suggest you contact the regions where those events occurred. If you'd like to see more memorials to those who died in the wake of the Dust Bowl, for example, I would start with your congressman, or maybe local governments in Oklahoma. If you want a memorial to the Rwandans who died in its genocide, you should try contacting their government or the government of the local communities where the genocide took place. Or perhaps, since the world was complicit, you could contact the UN.

You also seem to want to set some sort of quantitative limit on the number of people who died in order for a memorial to be erected. 3000 isn't enough for you? Just because x tragic event doesn't have a memorial and you deem it more tragic than y, we should wait before building a memorial to event y until a monument is erected for x?

Of course, you could argue that all monuments are tyrannical and authoritarian. Barthes does, when he points out that monuments are acutally teh first step of forgetting, or something to that effect. The general idea being that a monument already necessarily imposes a particular interpretation of the events it monumentalizes, erasing alternative explanations. It would have intertwined with your Jefferson quote pretty nicely. But you didn't really do that.