The World War II Memorial

Friedrich St. Florian, the designer of the World War II Memorial in Washington, died. Can you think of a more pointless piece of public architecture? The World War II Memorial succeeds only if your goal is for a monument to do absolutely nothing. I don’t even know what anyone gets from visiting it at this point, except to say you went. What are the emotions it is supposed to stir? I know some of have called it quasi-fascist. Maybe, though this seems a bit far for me, largely because it is just so ineffective in everything. The only positive thing I can possibly say about it is that rather than completely desecrate the once excellent space between the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument, it just blends into the landscape because it is anodyne. If beige was a monument, this is what it would be. As the Washington Post’s Marc Fisher said:

“The National World War II Memorial has the emotional impact of a slab of granite,” he wrote. “If it tells any story at all, it is so broad as to be indecipherable.”

So of course St. Florian’s other big commission was as the designer for Providence Place, the shopping mall in downtown Providence. As shopping malls go, I guess Providence Place isn’t terrible, but that’s what the nation decided–let’s bring in a shopping mall guy to design a World War II monument.