Wilfried Kuehn

Current Monuments

Monumentality is not a question of size. Monumental is the spatial compression of an idea; monumental is the collective presence of a building structure, when the urban space permeates its like in Nolli’s Rome. The theme of the monument is time – as collective memory and as typological duration in relation to the city. And yet, even brief events can be monumental, for example in urban processions and their more current forms, like the Smithsons’ contribution the 1968 Triennial. When are museums monumental? Collection houses are places that remove objects from the course of time, historicize them and in doing so evoke contemporary discourses. This gives them relevance as concerns their content, without it being clear how this should expressed in their architectural form. As a platform for displaying collections, the museum is not a monument, as a building within a city it can become one. Since our 2005 exhibition Momentane Monumente (Current Monuments) in Berlin, the monument has been the focus of our work. Two competition entries for Berlin – the Humboldtforum from 2008 the House of Prayer and Teaching from 2012 – as well as the recently completed Moderne Galerie Saarlandmuseum deal with the question of monumentality. In the latter project, the collaboration with artist Michael Riedel is programmatic. The collection house is simultaneously Kunst am Bau and Bau am Kunst; art and architecture are interwoven in a form that monumentalizes the process of creating the museum.