Tombs of Globalization

In the coastal city of Ravenna, which was, for a short time, the capital of the Ostrogothic successor kingdom to the Roman Empire, there is a tomb to King Theodoric.

Aesthetically, the tomb is almost entirely Gothic, except in construction, as the Roman technique of placing large unmortared stone blocks together for the walls was used. One should not mistake this tomb’s rather simple design as indicative of a weak king: the dome itself is a two-hundred-ton slab of rock, shipped across the Adriatic and dragged by sled to the worksite, requiring a massive amount of political and economic might. The mausoleum is marked by a great crack, which some say has a divine origin, as God struck the monument with lightning, punishing Theodoric for his heretical, Arian beliefs.

The mausoleum is an archeological remnant of a collapsed, post-apocalyptic society, the successor state to glorious Rome. The tomb is evidence of the radical cultural juncture between the Roman successor state and the Romans themselves. Gone is the embellishment of the Romans and the fierce invocation of gods and heroes. In this simple, unpainted tomb, we can see the new sensibilities of the Ostrogoths, who, though living in the ruins of Rome, were barely Roman at all. Little of what was Roman survived the subsequent centuries, and most of the Ostrogoths’ inheritance was ransacked. In fact, Theodoric stole pillars from a temple in Rome to use for his palace, which was, in turn, robbed of pillars by Charlemagne, then by Napoleon, then by the Louvre. Yet, because it had almost no Roman heritage, the bare white tomb was left alone. There were no statues, pillars, or mosaics to take.

Similarly, at several sites in the United States, we can see plainly the radical cultural juncture between American history and the brief period of rule by a globalized or neoliberal elite. These sites have become sepulchers of globalization, embodying raw emotion and ideas.

Building like a Fallen Kingdom

In June, the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) Memorial was unveiled to the public, just a few days before the grand opening of the Obama Presidential Center (which I will refer to as the Obama library). The GWOT memorial’s central feature, called “The Embrace,” is a curving, twisted arch, made of repurposed steel and covered in vegetation, rising from the earth as if cut away, with engraved footprints and shallow water beneath it. This large, abstract design is meant to evoke comfort. The memorial, designed by world-renowned Japanese architect Kengo Kuma and ten years in the making under the stewardship of George W. Bush, has received a terrible reception. The Obama library is a squat obelisk with nearly unreadable words carved upon it in invocation, appearing less like writing and more like neoliberal hieroglyphs. The park around the building shares design elements: sweeping curves, green space, sparse yet regular trees that cradle gentle footpaths, and an absolute absence of Greek or Roman design. Japanese natural design has informed other sites, inflecting global architecture with a zeal for winding paths and tended gardens, just as sushi once reshaped the Western palette.

At these sites, we can see the aesthetic and artistic sensibilities of a defeated global elite that has lost power to populists, with some of their monuments just barely completed, dedicated to a country that has already moved past them. The memorial and the library, like the tomb of Theodoric, have become relics of a fallen kingdom. They bear no resemblance to what came before and yet quietly herald what has come next. Like the tomb of Theodoric, they are sparse, bare, anti-heroic sites, which push the viewer towards quiet contemplation rather than heroic reverie. These structures, ancient and modern, stand in contrast to the heroic Greco-Roman art that came before, and later imitations that Charlemagne and the populists would fervently construct to recapture lost glory.

Completed in 2011, the Peace Institute was designed by the Israeli-Canadian-American architect Moshe Safdie. The five-story building positions three discrete office blocks around two shared atria fanning out from a corner entrance, one facing the Potomac and the other the Lincoln Memorial, and includes several adjacent buildings, including the original headquarters of the CIA in the broader campus. The one distinguishing feature of this building is the roof, designed in the shape of a dove. A massive glass wall faces the Lincoln Memorial, inviting sunlight in during the day. The building was closed to tourists passing by on the street. Built with sustainable engineering principles, the USIP is the first LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)-certified structure on the National Mall, infused with the environmentalist ethos of the Obama years. The building cost over 100 million dollars, with the bulk of the funds supplied by Congress and the remainder from private donors, including Lockheed Martin. Though meant to offer the public museum exhibits, the building rapidly became another inaccessible office building, more an extension of USAID than an independent peace institute.

The Obama library was designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (TWBTA). Its centerpiece is a granite tower whose faceted, largely windowless form the architects likened to four hands meeting in an embrace, and, like USIP, is set on a large campus, with landscape by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, inside Frederick Law Olmsted’s historic park. Costing $850 million after a decade of revisions and delays, it’s also the first presidential library built around a fully digitized NARA archive rather than a paper record.

The memorial design has been led by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma. Strikingly, the planned site is on a triangular plot at 23rd Street, Constitution Avenue, and Henry Bacon Drive NW — literally next door to USIP, and within sight of the Lincoln Memorial. The design’s central element, called “the embrace,” is reclaimed steel covered in living vegetation, arching over the earth and filtering light, aligned with Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery. A marble “Path of Honor,” lined with footprints, leads to what the architects have called “relics” from 9/11 at three entrances, which sit alongside a shallow water feature. The idea is for tourists to walk through the water, leaving footprints to dry alongside those engraved in the concrete. Civil religion is not merely a simile in the designs; rather, “relics” of 9/11 convey supernatural meaning without reference to any extant religion. Civil religion was meant as an analogy: it has no room for actual relics. In the future, archeologists may regard this as the monument of an odd cult that briefly arose, and worshipped the wreckage of a prior kingdom.

The End of Global Design

Like USIP’s dove and the library’s “four hands,” the “embrace” is a large symbolic structure that aims to soften the civic architecture. The memorial does not, like others, feature statues of warriors; instead, it aims to offer comfort, reflecting the Obama library’s ethos of togetherness and unity, as well as the Peace Institute’s dove.

These designs share a lineage, as Safdie, Tsien, and Williams have drawn on the American architect Louis Kahn, who embraced materials such as concrete and opposed decoration and adornment. This intersected nicely with globalization, as the stuff of American architectural identity — Greco-Roman and Beaux-Arts — is adornment, thus providing architects the language to dispense with identifying marks of national culture. This is why the monuments and buildings appear as if they could be in any developed country, but for the flags that indicate their national origin.

The architects themselves share design histories emphasizing single materials used with little to no adornment, adopting Kahnian brusqueness, though they rely heavily on greenery and gardens to balance the rough, unnatural materials. All three architects run transnational architecture firms designed for a global audience. Safdie’s biography is literally titled Global Citizen: The Architecture of Moshe Safdie. Kuma has worked in over 20 countries, and TWBTA built the Obama library as a digital library for the world and a global resource.

Each of these architects insists upon the special meaning of their work through rather obvious symbolic construction, relying on large abstract designs to convey ideas and explore themes. These ideas are often reducible to a lone feeling: “peace,” “comfort,” and “unity.” Despite their attempt to include local materials without adornment in pursuit of authentic design, they instead signal their global ambition and global audience, resulting in designs that feel “from nowhere” and for no one, even though they are for everyone. In terms of realpolitik, their “global art” appealed to political leaders seeking a post-national language of belonging that could subsume national, ethnic, and religious tension into a global utopian vision. Buildings designed for “humanity” and human feelings rather than for Americans or American memories appealed not only to elite ideas about their historic role as shepherds of the new, digital, globalized world, but also supplied artistic and physical legitimacy.

And yet just across the river, within sight of USIP’s dove and the embrace, ground is already breaking on Trump’s grand arch. As Charlemagne skipped over Theodoric’s tomb to pillage pillars from his Roman palace, Trump’s designs skip over global design, borrowing from the Arc de Triomphe.

Excavations

Imagine we are archeologists, a thousand years from now. We are excavating the ruins of Washington. Through our digging, we would find two radically different aesthetics. One Greco-Roman, one simple and stark. We might then say, briefly, that a new faction, “the concrete culture,” arose. They favored abstract designs and large buildings, and took over the kingdom seemingly without a war. What these monuments and buildings were would confuse us, as digital libraries would leave no records, and though large parks accompany these office buildings, libraries, and memorials, they would be long gone. We would find mostly hollow buildings, without statues, and with inscriptions, though most, being metal bolted to concrete, had long ago been stolen or rusted away. We may not be surprised that later buildings, grand and bearing some resemblance to far earlier ones in Europe and old Washington, too, were built to popular acclaim after these concrete structures, in rejection of them.