Completing the exhibition loop, it is with a sense of relief that one finds themselves back at the foot of the long corridor. On the way back the corridor decompresses the thoughts, allowing a contemplative transition from the sobering exhibitions to the outside world. The journey back, right, is that of ascent towards the light and the outside. It seems a quicker journey ending at the foot of the building and back at the barracks. Once again, one is faced with absence and the consequences of erosion of time. There is no sense of closure here; no poetic justice. The building and its journey offer no consolation, only a confrontation with a repeated history. The Rivesaltes Memorial takes an impressively long and hard look at France’s containment, detention and deportation of displaced populations across the middle of the twentieth century, yet it remains universal in its echo of the vast absences of forced migration. The material past of the site is a reference point for the new building and its relationships with its history, the surrounding landscape and the collective narrative. Rivesaltes Memorial adheres to the concept of the counter-monument. Although massive in its footprint, the building hides in plain sight, disappearing into the land, leaving us to question the cyclical patterns of history embedded in the narrative of absence.
Lejla Odobasic Novo
further references:
Halbwachs, Maurice. The Collective Memory. Translated by Francis J. Ditter, Jr. and Vida Yazdi Ditter. New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1950 Huyssen, Andreas. Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory . Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003 Nora, Pierre. Les Lieux de mémoire , 7 vols. Paris: Gallimard, 1984
Lejla Odobasic Novo is a licensed architect by the OAA and she currently teaches at the International Burch University Department of Architecture in Sarajevo. Her research lies within the area of culture and architecture in contested spaces.
on site review 36: our material future
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