Celebrated works of architecture were built through displacement. If these histories are forgotten or obscured, it is in part due to the willful production of certain narratives over others. History is as much about forgetting as it is about remembering, and we—that is to say, the architectural community—tend to recall stories of design heroism over horror.
The sphinx was defeated and lying toppled beneath the cliff, her own dark secrets forgotten.
Ovid, Metamorphoses, 8 CE
A monument can be an artwork, but it doesn’t have to be. It has to perpetuate memory and have a commemorative function. It’s everything from a marker in the ground to the triumphal arch in Washington Square Park.
Jonathan Kuhn, "Monuments to the Famous or Forgotten," 2014