It’s 6 years and a few weeks since I last saw Peter Eisenman’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the dense grey field of more than 3000 undulating concrete columns close to the Brandenburg Gate in the historical heart of Berlin. At that time, I was writing a dissertation about the problems of Monument building - specifically in post-war Germany - where the debates were raging on the painful 60th anniversaries of so many dark days. I had been impressed then by its silent impact; spacious and oppressive simultaneously, cool, even in mid-summer, as you're slowly submerged within its volume.
This time, like the last, it was with equal measures of delight and uncertainty that I witnessed people sitting and standing on, leaping between, or playing hide and seek around the concrete blocks; direct proof that once turned over to its rightful recipients – and irrespective of the steps taken to minimise the ‘wrong’ kinds of interaction – people would do as they pleased.
