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Designs of Destruction: The Making of Monuments in the Twentieth Century

By (author) Lucia Allais

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How architectural monuments survived and historical preservation was reinvented during the destructions of the twentieth century. Â The twentieth century was highly destructive, but from its landscapes of ruins was born a new architectural type: the cultural monument. In the wake of World War I, an international movement arose which aimed to protect architectural monuments in large numbers, and regardless of style, hoping not only to keep them safe from future conflicts but also to make them worthy of protection from more quotidian forms of destruction. An evolving groupâ€”including architects, intellectuals, art historians, archaeologists, curators, and lawyersâ€”grew out of the new diplomacy of the League of Nations. During and after World War II, it became affiliated with the Allied Military Government and was eventually absorbed by the UN as UNESCO. By the 1970s, this organization had begun granting World Heritage status to a global register of significant sitesâ€”from buildings to bridges, shrines to city centers, ruins to colossi. Examining key episodes in the history of this preservation effortâ€”including projects for the Parthenon, the Cathedral of St-LÃ´, the temples of Abu Simbel, and the Bamyian Buddahs â€”Lucia Allais demonstrates how the group deployed the notion of culture to shape architectural sites, and how architecture in turn shaped the very idea of global culture. Designs of Destruction emphasizes how the technical project of ensuring various buildingsâ€™ longevity jolted preservation into establishing a transnational set of codes, values, and practices. At the same time, this paradoxically helped integrate technologies of destructionâ€”from bombs to bulldozersâ€”into cultural governance. Designs of Destruction not only offers a fascinating narrative of cultural diplomacy, based on extensive archival findings; it also contributes an important new chapter in the intellectual history of modernity by showing the manifold ways architectural form is charged with concretizing abstract ideas and ideals, even in its destruction.

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