Sites of Memory: Perspectives on Architecture and Race & Landscapes of Memory and Experience - Sites and Memory - Brief Article

Architectural Review, The, Dec, 2001 by Edward Robbins

Edited by Craig Evan Barton. Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press. 2001. [pounds sterling]18.95

LANDSCAPES OF MEMORY AND EXPERIENCE

Edited by Jan Birksted. London: SPON Press. 2001. [pounds sterling]29.99

Site and memory are mainstays of current academic discourse. Both books remind us that these concepts though useful also contain traps.

The 12 essays in Sites of Memory roam over many subjects: African-American places, memorials, black college campuses and the body among other things. Contributions, of uneven quality, provide rich documentation of the role of race in the social and cultural development of American architecture and landscape, analyses of race as a spatial category and a wide range of conflicting ideas about its meaning and importance for African-American cultural identity. For most of us, these essays will make visible what has been previously invisible. For this we should thank the editor. There is, however, evenness in the way private and public, individual and social sites and memories are presented. This results in a narrative with no centre and no sense of what is part of a shared African-American experience and what is wholly personal. As a result we are left wondering what is more and less critical to the understanding the role of race in the making of American culture and its physical landscape.

Landscapes of Memory ranges over memory, vision, representation and philosophy. Some of the essays, again of uneven quality, address landscape and memory, others do not. They remind us that terms like memory and site can become so broad as to be almost empty of meaning. The essays range from the American desert to China, from discussions of gardens, landscape and architectural projects to exegeses of landscape texts and to the camera lucida. Although offered as an illustration of why and how landscape studies can engender important theoretical and methodological advances, they are all deeply embedded within either conventional architecture historical or current postmodern and poststructural approaches.