Examining the Bombastic Classicism of the London Bomber Command Memorial

Now, the Bomber Command is an episode in British history about which many people actually feel considerable ambivalence. They were astonishingly dangerous missions?50 percent of the young men in the bomber crews, whose average age was 22, were killed or seriously wounded?and the missions also resulted, intentionally, in enormous numbers of civilian casualties. You can?t doubt the courage of the bomber crews, and no one will ever truly know whether the bombing raids that created firestorms on German streets shortened the war and ultimately saved more lives than they cost.

I say that not to make a historical judgment but to point out that this memorial commemorates an aspect of World War II fraught with ambiguity, even now, and classicism rarely serves such situations well. Classical architecture is absolute, simple, direct, and clear. It evokes associations with nobility, grandeur, and high aspiration. There is no irony in classicism, and there is rarely any ambiguity. Indeed, this is surely part of the reason that the classical style has so often felt right for courthouses in the United States: dignity, clarity, fairness, and propriety are what we want from the legal system, and we like buildings that announce this to us at the outset.

But is it what we want for a public monument commemorating a chapter in history in which, for all we respect the courage of those who are being honored, may still bring about mixed feelings about what they were called to do? The bombastic architecture renders the complexities of this historical chapter moot. The Bomber Command Memorial made me grateful yet again for the genius of Maya Lin?s Vietnam Veterans Memorial, in Washington, D.C., which so brilliantly and respectfully paid tribute to the fallen soldiers while acknowledging a nation?s complex and contradictory feelings toward their mission.

I?m not sure classical architecture would be capable of such nuance under even the best of circumstances.?London in the age of Prince Charles has many architects who favor traditional styles, and Liam O?Connor is one of many whom I?m sure could be counted on to restore a townhouse in Mayfair with great aplomb. But the qualities needed to create a profound memorial are different; they require both great imagination and deep subtlety.

Looking at the whole of Hyde Park Corner, with Decimus Burton?s great Wellington Arch of 1830 in the center of the traffic roundabout, as well as Apsley House, the gates to Hyde Park, and several other memorials, I was tempted, for a moment, to think that O?Connor had come up with a reasonable enough response to this context. Hyde Park Corner is, after all, a difficult jumble, with plenty of other classical things around; maybe the best way to bring coherence is just to keep the classical thing going. But then I looked more carefully, and I noticed that the site of the Bomber Command Memorial is as much a part of the rolling landscape of Green Park as the urban maze of Hyde Park Corner, and this architecture has nothing whatsoever to do with the soft landscape of the park. And you don?t really see this memorial as a part of the whole of Hyde Park Corner, in part because a traffic underpass gets in the way. O?Connor did set the huge statues to face into the park, which is nice if you approach the memorial from within Green Park. But if you make your way from the Hyde Park Corner side, as I suspect most people will, you see, first, a slew of classical columns, then the monumental soldiers, who greet you with seven sculpted posteriors.

Related: For Goldberger?s column about the controversy over the planned Dwight Eisenhower memorial in Washington, D.C., pick up a copy of the August 2012 Vanity Fair.

Source: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2012/07/London-bomber-command-memorial-paul-goldberger

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