3. Defining Monumentality: What makes a monument?

In his 1944 piece on the subject, Louis Kahn defines monumentality as “a spiritual quality inherent in a structure which conveys the feeling of its eternity, that it cannot be added to or changed.”While Kahn believes that "monumentality is enigmatic…[and] cannot be intentionally created,” he argues that “architectural monuments indicate a striving for structural perfection which has contributed in great part to their impressiveness, clarity of form and logical scale." To illustrate this definition, Kahn uses the Parthenon, the “recognized architectural symbol of Greek civilization,” as a primary example. This characterization of the Parthenon highlights the complex relationship between the age of a structure and its monumental status. Kahn acknowledges that it is easier characterize ancient structures as monuments, and that today’s monuments cannot simply be copies of those older forms, for "the images we have before us of monumental structures of the past cannot live again with the same intensity and meaning." Kahn’s admiration for the “the architect who possesses the will to grow with the many angles of [architecture’s] development,” highlights his belief that the modern monument must meet the technological limits of that epoch’s design, while still striving for structural perfection and a feeling of eternity.[1]

Many architectural theorists have attempted to develop the relationship between time and monumentality, one such understanding being Kurt Forster’s analysis of Riegl’s theories on monumentality, memory, and the mortality of architecture. According to Forster, monuments to art and architecture are “unintentional monuments,” valued in modern society but whose survival “remains precarious.” He considers that the modern status as monument marks “a loss of practical usefulness and a halt to further transformation,” which he argues “render[s]… all objects and events as so many instances in the ceaseless flux of historical life.” To Forster, everything in architecture is ‘of the past,’ and its ultimate value derives from its age, above all usefulness and beauty. Buildings that lose their ‘practical usefulness,’ in turn, can be understood as  ‘empty symbols,’ which allows for their structures to embody meanings larger than their original function. [2]

While Forster believes that structures must lose their original meaning in order to truly be considered monuments, Sert, Leger, and Giedion propose the opposite to be true – that the ‘empty shells’ generated by architects in the 20^th century are a “devaluation of monumentality” because they in “no way represent the spirit or the collective feeling of modern times.” In Nine Points on Monumentality, they consider monuments to be “human landmarks which men have created as symbols for their ideals,” intended to outlive their creators and serve as a link between past and present.Importantly, they link the architecture of structures and cities through the monument, in which monuments would serve as “the most powerful accents in these vast schemes” of city planning, allowing for new, creative possibilities in the relationship between architecture and city planning.  Finally, they consider that the creation of monuments is only possible “in periods in which a unifying consciousness and a unifying culture exist,” a possible reason that monuments in the fragmented modern world are so hard to classify.[3]

What then, from these diverse definitions of monumentality, can be extracted and applied to buildings like Bankside and Battersea Power Stations, whose histories and functions have evolved over decades? In addition to design, purpose, age, the quality that all three definitions explore is the concept of symbolism. Semiotics, the field of study related to signs and symbols, can be used to connect monumentality with both the physical structure and theoretical conception of a building. In Semiology and the Urban, theorist Roland Barthes explores the relationship between the built environment and language, and favors linguists, and more generally writers to represent cities and architecture. An example of this is his analysis of Victor Hugo, who is famous for, among other things, the polemical statement that the book will ‘kill’ the monument. The monument, according to Hugo, is an inscription of man in space, and the invention and proliferation of easily distributable texts lessens the need for monolithic spatial inscriptions, such as the ancient monuments. These two modes of writing, in stone and in paper, are subsequently united in Barthes’ assertion that the city itself is a writing, and the user of the city is a kind of reader who appropriates fragments of the reading in order to experience them. [4]  

The idea of the readable, writeable city, allows us to understand how a monument, or a potential monument, can have so many disparate meanings and interpretations, each reflecting a different ‘reading’ of the city and reality itself. In the present, it is impossible to generate a single coherent narrative for a culture or city, as Nine Points on Monumentality asserts. Thus, in the fragmented present, potential monuments exist in a liminal period where the buildings are both loved and hated, their significance, monumental status, discussed, discarded, and re-established depending on the interpretation. What comes with time and history is a simplification of the historical and architectural narrative, allowing for the simple classification – or declassification – of buildings as monuments. This, however, does not disregard the value of the design, function, and history of the potential monument, for these three qualities are what influence the last player in the quest to identify monumentality: the people who interact with the potential monument.

Ultimately, based on the discourse surrounding the building during its period of flux, the potential monument will survive long enough for its narrative, and the narrative of the region around it, to simplify into a single, unified meaning. In the case of Bankside and Battersea, not enough time has passed; however, the city of London has identified them as icons and potential monuments, and has been redeveloping them with the express purpose of maintaining their outer forms while generating revenue with their interior spaces. Thus, if the architecture and industrial legacy of these two power stations is strong enough to create discourse surrounding their monumental status – which I argue they do – then the two buildings exist as fluid monuments, living in a state of flux until the multiplicities of stories surrounding them can be converted into a unified narrative.