Monuments & Memorials

People identify themselves with public buildings and places – landmarks of their lives in the city – connecting them to their personal story, their history. Bridges, museums, universities, libraries, squares and even street names. These types of buildings are mostly defined as our heritage but are also chapters and verses of lives. They contain millions of stories and memories connected to people using these places. In many cities today the public spaces that are built tell the stories of the few. They reflect the images of the people who are in power. Other people can walk the streets, sometimes even enter the building, but they will never be part of the story.

Who decides which stories are told by the public buildings and heritage around us?

Who decides which part of history is on display? By choosing this – we chose what is important – we chose who is important. Many West-European cities are excluding stories of some of their citizens. If we are to build inclusive cities, this needs to change. Only by recognising multiple realities of identities and identifications, can a city be formed that facilitates inclusivity.

Like many West European cities, the Netherlands is dealing more and more with the issue of which stories are told through our national identity and heritage. Who feels represented, and who is excluded? At the same time cities become segregated on a variety of levels: ‘place branding’, gentrification, neoliberalism, and right-wing ideology seem to ‘cleanse’ cities of their diversity.

City centres of the world’s big cities are increasingly becoming the same. The power of private developers is rapidly reshaping the city centres. Many architects seem to be slavishly executing plans made by developers. The gimmicky use of references to history is ubiquitous in their designs, but these are often bland attempts to ‘inject’ their designs with identity. This exclusive and homogeneous architecture pushes the less fortunate to the outskirts, much in the same way as in other gentrified cities like Beirut or New York. City centres are gradually growing into a happy open-air museum where tourists stroll and only the very rich reside.

The Amsterdam canals seem to be frozen in time and are arguably a copy from the seventeenth century—to which some gladly refer as the glorified ‘Golden Age’ rather than the age of the colonies and slavery.

This is highly problematic, as people of Surinamese, Antillean, and Indonesian descent have little to relate to when considering Amsterdam’s architectural design and a part of its street names. Thanks to former Dutch Prime Minister Jan-Peter Balkenende, referring to the ‘VOC mentality’ has become a common way, mostly in politics, to emphasise the alleged entrepreneurial spirit of the Dutch.

Ironically, many of the ships sailing for the Dutch East India Company (VOC, Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie) were manned by crews that comprised men from throughout Europe and of whom only as little as15 percent were Dutch. This is indicative of the selective and tainted picture that is created in the media and public discourse. Simultaneously, 2nd and 3rd generation migrants from the former Dutch colonies, migrants from other parts of the world and people that are aware of mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion call for the revision of the Dutch colonial history and demand that different interpretations be included in the colonial narrative. How can we reinterpret existing cultural heritage so that its meaning is more inclusive? This is a very important question that has been put on the agenda by many initiatives pleading for a more inclusive society but is still just partially recognised by governmental organisations that are deciding about heritage and not at all recognised by developers and investors that are building architecture and public space in Dutch Cities. This a very urgent issue because it touches the core of our (architects) profession and intention of building: for whom do we build? Who is allowed to use the public building we are renovating or designing? What is the intention of the people or organisations that will use it? Do they have an inclusive approach?

Cities are not only built from bricks, but rather by memories that are linked to a place – a place you need access to in order to access those memories or create them.

The people excluded from those places are unable to access a part of their history, and by that their history is denied. For policy makers and Cultural Heritage organisations in the Netherlands this is a new approach and is still difficult to implement.

I therefore argue that designing diverse and open identities through architecture is crucial. It is possible to grasp and transform their exclusive character by firstly investigating the way local and governmental politics control how public spaces express particular identities, and secondly investigating the multiplicity of the histories of these places, and thirdly by proposing visual case studies that show that it is possible to design public space and use heritage in a way in which as much groups as possible are represented. In order to give all stories – past and present and future- the space they deserve we must start creating public space and treating heritage differently. By creating space for different, many and layered stories, and with public space that facilitates encounters through shared activities and rituals.

I also believe we need international case studies, a more distant view in order to see our own situation more clearly.

In 2016 my design research was published in the book Mortal Cities Forgotten Monuments, in which I focused on the way architecture was used in Bosnia Herzegovina as a tool for connection and later as a tool for destruction and segregation. At the end of my book, I show a design proposal (called Jump) for a monument dedicated to the ritual of diving, which was based on a ritual as old as time in the city Mostar. After the book was finished and after the positive reviews, I received in the Netherlands I realised this book is not about the Bosnia of 1993. It’s about the cities we live in today. The story belongs to the here and now. This was confirmed to me when in March 2018 minister Van Engelshoven (Ministry of Education, Culture and Science) send out the letter ‘Cultuur in een open samenleving’ (Culture in an open society) to de Tweede Kamer (the house of representatives). This letter contains an elaboration of the plans in the field of culture in the coalition agreement. In this letter they ended their plans in a conclusion which was supported by an image of my design proposal Jump. The letter says that our government will invest and extra 325 million in heritage, because it wants to preserve the significance of heritage and design by linking it to current societal issues we are facing now. The fact that they use a proposal made for a Bosnian destroyed and segregated city shows the importance of exchange of knowledge internationally.

It is important to learn from and exchange knowledge about the use of heritage/monuments in public space and public buildings especially in a city like Cape Town, which is connected to the Netherlands by its colonial past. It is important to investigate heritage from the viewpoint of architecture, the relationship between history, identity, and mechanisms of in – and exclusion. Not only to help architects, policy makers and institutions in the Netherlands to work on more inclusive cities, but also to build up an international team of collaborators that exchange knowledge, share case studies and visual proposals to show that a more inclusive approach on heritage and public space is possible and desired by many citizens.

The Netherlands is connected to the rest of the world through shared experiences, colonial domination, trade, military missions, migration, and hundreds of other thin threads spun between cities that have influenced and changed each other. As a consequence, the Netherlands is a country with many cultures and many understandings of history. Some of these accounts dominate over others. Some have been cut and kept invisible in an attempt to erase darker histories. My recent travel to Cape Town made me question whose interests’ urban environments serve?

Upon arrival in Cape Town, after a 12-hour flight from Amsterdam, I notice that the ease in which I am able to experience the city makes me uneasy. It doesn’t feel right to arrive on the other side of the world into so much recognition: architecture, language, names, and people who look like me. The privileges that I’m automatically given, based on my white skin, feel wrong. What happened here to make it so easy for me? I’m familiar with a world where I’m always aware of the name in my passport. I know that privileges based on name or appearance always have a dark side. One always profits at the expense of another. If one has access, another is excluded.

Cape Town, with its historically instilled inequalities of access, is connected by one of the hundreds of thin threads with the Netherlands. Being there revealed to me an invisible part of Dutch history. In many cities today the public spaces tell the stories of a few. They reflect images of those who are in power. Other people can walk the streets, but they will never be part of the story. Who decides which stories and whose histories are told by the architecture surrounding us? Or whose urban culture is valuable enough to manifest itself in urban redevelopments? These choices reflect what we think is important, who is important. Inclusivity can only be facilitated by recognising multiple realities, stories, and identities.

The dominant Dutch narrative is that the colonies belong to the past and that the injustices performed through them are irrelevant for its present. However, as an architect I believe that cities don’t only consist of bricks, but of memories; inherently linked to places. People whose stories are excluded from public space are unable to access a part of their history: it is denied. Dutch public space is in strong denial of the colonial past and its victims. A process which excludes communities from identifying with their cities. They are threads that have been cut. We choose a one-sided account of history at the cost of inclusivity.

Research leads to spatial proposals that expose the connection in both places in order for the cities to re-enter each other’s present. The relevance of the research lies in discovering the histories that have been erased from the dominant narrative, while still existing in the consciousness of marginalised communities. I searched for common ground as a process of connecting groups together through public space.

Travelling to, and investigating, the international counterparts of these cities is crucial for contributing deeper understanding and a new approach to exclusion practices in urban environments. International research allows people to significantly contribute to a body of knowledge on alternative forms of urban development, which is undoubtedly becoming a crucial responsibility of the architect.