Bonder+Wodiczko: ACSA 2006 faculty design award
The 2006 ACSA faculty design award winners have been announced – and Bonder + Wodiczko, of Roger Williams University and MIT [respectively], are among them [the other winners were Michael Hughes & Selma Catovic-Hughes of the University of Arkansas, Grace E. La of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Matthew Lutz of Virginia Tech]. Bonder + Wodiczko are receiving the award for their current work on the design of a memorial to the abolition of slavery [Memorial à l’abolition de l’esclavage] in Nantes, France [yes, that Nantes].

The project is one dealing with memory and the act of witnessing. The site, a quay on the Loire used before the end of the slave trade in France, stands as one of few remaining witnesses to the atrocities that occurred. The project exposes the remaining underground structure of the quay, by means of a series of large glass panels cutting through the ground plane. The hidden structure of the quay from the 19th century is being excavated – opening and exposing an underground passage to both the river and the sky; the other witnesses of the slave trade in Nantes.
Visitors to the memorial will walk along an altered landscape, littered with plaques commemorating each ship that carried slaves into Nantes [the plaques will display the name of the ship, the date, the number of slaves on board, and the number of slaves who lost their lives on the voyage]. Having walked along the length of the glass [which you can see actually slips through the ground plane], visitors descend a monumental staircase into a subterranean passage where these three aforementioned witnesses – the river, the quay, and the sky – meet [through the reflection from the glass] in one confined space. These panes of glass cutting through the site will bear etchings of relevant / meaningful quotes regarding slavery, and it’s abolition [articles from the constitution, memorable quotes from influential people at the time, etc.]. The monument ends with a gallery/exhibition space, which will display relevant artifacts, information, and artwork. The space within the memorial will also address the issue of modern day slavery, using these memories of the past to frame ideas for the future.

As monuments and memorials should speak to and address a plurality of publics and generations, what becomes a central concern is their becoming vessels for “testimonies,” for emotions and thinking, for democratic and pedagogic discourses, for transformative working-through, healing and awareness, as paths towards the possibility of a better world. Hence, to develop their “speech” and to elicit their potential for questioning and ethical functioning, will be central to their effectiveness. To do so, a certain “monumental speech” should be developed; one that may integrate past (traumatic) events into present-day realities and experiences. A site-specific speech act that actualizes memorial spaces into political and cultural action demands responsibility and elicits “response-ability” vis-��-vis the past and the future. Memorial projects can thus be understood as ethical vehicles for a kind of speech-act constantly re-actualized by visitors, urbanites, and present-day actors in sites that remind and remember through fostering and encouraging the work of memory: Memory-Works.
[Julian Bonder, from 32]

[ed. note: the other ACSA awards were also listed in the PDF, but I don't know anything about those projects. Anyone who does, feel free to submit some images and info, so that work can be featured as well]
Posted: January 17th, 2007
at 1:04pm by orangemenace
Categories: architecture, competitions, featured ninjas
Comments: 2 comments
shoe [haines] house
First off, yes – this is a real house in Pennsylvania [apparently]. All I have to say is…MYNINJAPLEASE!!! That’s it.
via arkinetia blog, more info [and in English] at FMCA
Posted: January 17th, 2007
at 10:47am by orangemenace
Categories: architecture, housing, my ninja, please
Comments: No comments
















