Buildings of disaster (includes some non-buildings)
"The images of burning or exploded buildings make a different, populist history of architecture, one based on emotional involvement rather than scholarly appreciation."
Want a 6 inch nickel replica of the World Trade Center? Yours for just $95 (hurry, they’re limited edition). Found via Popbitch, although they’re more interested in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel where Diana crashed.
They’re struggling to make up the numbers, though: OK, so the Pentagon, Oklahoma City federal building, Three Mile Island or Chernobyl are obvious choices. But the Unabomber’s cabin? Watergate? The OJ Simpson car chase? I’m not buying my cheap replica of a now-destroyed building to commemorate the loss of thousands of lives, if the designers sales pitch succombs to such semantic looseness as to describe a media frenzy involving an american football player driving a car as a disaster.
In a sense, though, a lot of major historical disasters aren’t suitable for being reinterpreted as small sculptures of nickel. Challenger, for instance, doesn’t work because you can’t sculpt explosions without a lot of wire. Any naval disasters are a problem, because the end result is the lack of a ship in a lot of water, unlike building bombings which leave some of the building behind. How are you supposed to depect the Sarin gas attack in Tokyo - a replica Tokyo underground station? (The Pont de l’Alma only works because it features a crashed car.)
It’s a tricky one, and I feel faintly grateful for not having to make decisions like this in my job.