Black Lives Matters to Architecture: A View from Europe

Abstract

Black Lives Matters began in the United States, where it has included the dismantlement of commemorations of the Confederacy, a breakaway state established to preserve slavery. In Europe it has sparked discussions of local monuments as well as drawn unprecedented attention to the way in which the slave trade and enslaved labour funded the construction of cities and country estates. This now needs to be acknowledged in public space. The challenge presents an appropriate moment to remember the ties that bind commemorative structures on both sides of the Atlantic and the impact that tributes to European nationalism have had on diverse strands of modern American architecture. These connections provide a back story for the newly discovered relevance, and at time effectiveness, of representational sculpture, which they integrated into built forms that appeared to embed regimes of all stripes in their local landscapes. Abstract counter-monuments often proved effective in addressing the Holocaust. Substituting the human figure for the shards of a shattered past that have long been juxtaposed in German memoryscapes with visions of a utopian future, may possibly provide a means of acknowledging the pain that runs through the cities that many of us inhabit. This in turn may prove to be an important step on the way to building the more equitable future for which we attempt to prepare the way as we work to decolonize our curricula.