Editorial : An American Ara Pacis?

GEORGE DODDS University of Tennessee

Editorial An American Ara Pacis?

I have . . . chosen this time and place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth [is] too rarely perceived. And that is the most important topic on earth: peace. What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, and the kind that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and build a better life for their children—not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace in all time. —John F. Kennedy, American University Commencement Address, June 10, 1963 When will the United States erect its own Ara Pacis? The Ara Pacis in Rome was built by the Emperor Augustus to commemorate an unprecedented period of civil harmony. A contemporary American Altar of Peace seems unlikely in a country that lives under a constant orange haze of terror. Moreover, when will we sate our appetite for monumentalizing war in granite, marble, and bronze? If President Kennedy’s ‘‘Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Speech,’’ as it is popularly known, and history in general teach us anything, it is how generally immune so many of us are to history’s lessons. Battles and wars are won, chronicled, and celebrated. Yet, we commemorate the loss. The losses we commemorate are less national than personal. Our monuments prompt us to remember the lives lost, even those we did not know, rather than the reasons for which a nation wars, cities are destroyed, and entire cultures are all but obliterated. The pages of the history of war are spotted with the fingerprints of architects reaching back millennia, using forced labor to construct now well-loved monuments, to ancient Greek temples surrounded by ‘‘phalanxes’’ of columns. Consider the Erechtheum’s ‘‘Porch of the Maidens.’’ Try reconciling what seems today the placid faces of those lovely figures to their fate recounted by Vitruvius. Since before written history, master builders and architects have helped, among other things, to design stratagems, machines, fortifications, memorials,

and camps. The latter were for soldiers and prisoners alike (civilian and military). During World War II, some of these ‘‘camps’’ were mere temporary housing for those awaiting a racially predetermined death. More recently, architects have adopted software designed for the military to help realize heretofore improbably shaped building forms. Architectural discourse has also co-opted militaristic nomenclature just as the military has appropriated architectural terminology to fit its uses. Using some of these same terms, speaking midway between the Cuban Missile Crisis and his assassination in Dallas, President Kennedy concluded his address, arguing not of ‘‘a new world order’’ but of a world more productively and peacefully ordered. He spoke not of an idealized world at peace but of the ideals upon which a peaceful world could be constructed by people of good conscience, of praxis in action, where war is viewed not as ‘‘merely politics by other means’’ but rather as the last resort of failed relations, foreign and domestic. The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough—more than enough—of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But

Detail, Erechtheum, Acropolis, Athens (c. 421 BCE).

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EDITORIAL

Journal of Architectural Education, p. 3 ª 2008 ACSA

we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we labor on—not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace.1 Recent history demonstrates that the United States neither was ‘‘prepared if others wish it’’ in September 2001, nor in possession of a ‘‘strategy of peace’’ to share with allies and enemies alike today. Richard Nixon’s mantra from the Vietnam War era of ‘‘peace with honor’’ has been replaced, albeit tacitly, with ‘‘honor without peace.’’ How will we commemorate this honor without peace? Moreover, how does one design a monument to the War on Terror—a war that by definition has no clear end? When will the United States build its Ara Pacis, for whom, and where? Of what will such an ephemeral monument be built? As architects increasingly focus on ‘‘networking,’’ global practices, and emerging technologies, if all our energies are to be sustainable, it seems incumbent on our discipline to consider questions such as these. Note 1. American University Commencement Address, June 10, 1963.