Military honours.A dignified subterranean space into which the sky's light throws shadowy, moving memories of the contribution made by women to US defence. As tragic television news items continually remind us, Arlington National Cemetery Arlington National Cemetery, 420 acres (170 hectares), N Va., across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C.; est. 1864. More than 60,000 American war dead, as well as notables including Presidents William Howard Taft and John F. Kennedy, Gen. John J. is the grand necropolis necropolis: see cemetery. necropolis (Greek: “city of the dead”) Extensive and elaborate burial place serving an ancient city. The locations of these cemeteries varied. of the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. , in which its military heroes are buried. It lies on an axis which runs south-west from the Lincoln Memorial Lincoln Memorial, monument, 107 acres (45 hectares), in Potomac Park, Washington, D.C.; built 1914–17. The building, designed by Henry Bacon and styled after a Greek temple, has 36 Doric columns representing the states of the Union at the time of Lincoln's on the other side of the Potomac River Potomac River River, east-central U.S. Rising in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, it is about 287 mi (462 km) long. It flows southeast through the District of Columbia into Chesapeake Bay. It is navigable by large vessels to Washington, D.C. to Arlington House, on top of a green hill, the flanks of which are transformed into a topography of the dead with rows of identical white gravestones that stretch ever further upward. A sort of open-air apse terminates the great line of the axis against the rising ground. McKim, Mead & White created the grand Neo-Classical gesture out of pale granite in 1927; it was to be one of the last gestures of the City Beautiful Movement before it died in the Great Crash and the Depression. The very formal but chaste semi-circle was cut into the hill as the main entrance to the Cemetery. Now, it not only serves that function, but forms the front wall of the Women's Memorial and Education Center. A national competition was held to find designers for a monument which would act as a focus of memory for the efforts of women in defence of the USA. Weiss/Manfredi won with a proposal which modestly detracts neither from McKim, Mead & White, nor from the sacred landscape beyond, but combines with them to provide moving spaces and memorable experiences. Weiss/Manfredi were determined to allow McKim, Mead & White to continue to speak, so nothing was to appear above the balustrade of the apse, and the whole front was renovated - it was no more than a concrete retaining wall faced in granite. New work started by digging out the hill behind the wall and exposing the curved back of the structure. So an exhibition concourse could be created articulated into 22 bays by the buttresses of the concrete wall. Luminance The amount of brightness, measured in lumens, that is given off by a pixel or area on a screen. For example, dark red and bright red would have the same chrominance, but a different luminance. from a continuous glass roof light 67m (220ft) in diameter pours down into the new space. Cut deeper into the hillside are the volumes that do not need daylight: the lecture theatre, Hall of Honor, the computerized register of the fallen, shop and so on. Access to the Women's Memorial is at each end of McKim, Mead & White's arc. But access to the cemetery proper had to be maintained, and the architects solved the problem in an ingenious, powerful, yet respectful way. They opened four of the original stone niches in the apse and led stairs from them up through the luminous exhibition space to the new terrace which follows the curve of the wall. When you go up through these stairs, you are separated from the interior of the Women's Memorial by glass walls, so you can look into the exhibition space, but not enter it - uphill radial circulation is completely separated from the level path round the arc. In the latter, the sun makes a continually moving pattern of shadows - not only of the glazing bars of the continuous rooflight (they are made as unobtrusive as possible by trussing truss n. 1. Medicine A supportive device, usually a pad with a belt, worn to prevent enlargement of a hernia or the return of a reduced hernia. 2. a. them, so reducing their sections). Of course they still create shadows, but the most powerful and haunting memory is of shadow words thrown onto the smooth, pale, finely crafted marble wall which runs round the whole of the longer circumference of the space. Sunshine casts the shadows down from where the letters are incised incised /in·cised/ (in-sizd´) cut; made by cutting. into 19mm (3/4in) glass slabs held by stainless steel stainless steel: see steel. stainless steel Any of a family of alloy steels usually containing 10–30% chromium. The presence of chromium, together with low carbon content, gives remarkable resistance to corrosion and heat. brackets above the weatherproof glazing. Such thick slabs are perhaps supposed to recall the lines of memorial stones on the hill beyond; they are certainly designed to commemorate the roles of women in the defence of their country, with quotations from speeches, and reports of past conflicts. On a sunny day, the device works magically. Others have criticized the lack of shadows in cloudy weather, but then the tallness and greyness of the space has appropriate, dignified and visually uplifting melancholy. (One problem of the transparent double roof that may be difficult to deal with in the long run is cleaning the weatherproof layers of glass under the symbolic transparent slabs.) The entrance foyer is, frankly, rather dull, with wood detailing that evokes '60s stolidity. Beyond the smooth marble wall are inner rooms, each of which is treated differently. The auditorium is utilitarian, but enlivened en·liv·en tr.v. en·liv·ened, en·liv·en·ing, en·liv·ens To make lively or spirited; animate. en·liv  en·er n. by a folded ply ceiling. Honor Hall and the place that houses the computerized register are carefully and finely made, with fine panelling in stone and wood, smooth stone floors (as opposed to the polished concrete of the exhibition arc) and careful lighting. These chambers carry a (very distant) echo of catacombs but, like all the other devices in the building, everything is modest, yet certainly not lacking presence and dignity. America's Women's Memorial is part of an honorific hon·or·if·ic adj. Conferring or showing respect or honor. n. A title, phrase, or grammatical form conveying respect, used especially when addressing a social superior. landscape, gently and unassertively making its meaning felt through its spaces, and so it avoids assertive gestures of so many of the other monuments of the US capital. It would be easy to be Freudian about the differences between the mostly strident monuments to men and this gentle and recessive recessive /re·ces·sive/ (re-ses´iv) 1. tending to recede; in genetics, incapable of expression unless the responsible allele is carried by both members of a pair of homologous chromosomes. 2. one devoted to women. But its very quietness and serene modesty make it an appropriate monument for our times to the fallen of whatever sex. Architect Weiss/Manfredi Architects, New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. Design Team Marion Weiss, Michael A. Manfredi, Michael DeCandia, Charles Wahl, Christopher Ballentine, Jennifer Graessle, Karl Lehrke, Stephen Moser Landscape architect EDAW EDAW Eight Days A Week (Beatles song) EDAW Eckbo, Dean, Austin & Williams (New York, NY) Photographs Jeff Goldberg/ESTO |
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