How counter-memorials make the past present and what designers might learn from it

Most often, memorials tower over us, making a spectacle of the past, while we, the spectators, are reduced to passive onlookers. Towering on pedestals, enormous horses or even on columns, the heroes of the past are present as oversized heroes of history. Besides their size, they are almost always depicted realistically, often in the middle of an important historical event. As such, they are presenting history as unambiguous and static. It is also something made into something that happened some time ago, distancing it in space and time from the lives of the spectator, rendering it a historical spectacle rather than a part of the present.

Counter-memorials do the opposite. They create landscapes we can inhabit, where past and present meet. They evoke rather than impose. They connect horizontally to our world rather than rise above it on pedestals or oversized horses. Counter-memorials materialize memory as a process rather than in the form of a static historical product. They emphasize abstraction over representation, the memories of victims over the celebration of victories, and instead of venerating official history, they are a forum for subjective engagement with the past.

Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a well-known example of this approach. The memorial consists of two very long black granite walls. The walls are inscribed with the names of over 58,000 American soldiers who died or went missing in action during the war, listed in chronological order of their date of casualty. The granite’s reflective surface allows visitors to see their own reflection alongside the names, connecting the present here-and-now with the past.

Described as a “cut in the earth,” the memorial acts as a wound, requiring visitors to descend into it. The physical experience of moving down into this space creates a bodily and emotional response beyond that of traditional visual engagement.

The piece was initially criticized for its minimalism and lack of traditional heroic representation. But today, it has become one of the most visited memorials in the USA, and it has been praised for its ability to invoke a sense of collective mourning and personal reflection.

Like Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial, counter-memorials resist closure, insisting on keeping the wound open as an interpretive space for the individual and society. They do this by spatially immersing the visitors in a sensory multilayered experience. More than that, they also often work with time, combining the time of the visitor’s here-and-now with the time of the past. In the Vietnam Memorial, it does so by arranging the forward-going chronology of the soldiers’ deaths with the forward movement of the visitors.

In another counter-memorial, The Aschcrott Fountain, Horst Hoheisel reconstructs a Nazi-destroyed fountain as an inverted subterranean structure. Visitors hear water flow underground but see only a dry basin, collapsing past destruction and present absence into a single sensory experience.

My favorite memorial, however, is the 9/11 memorial made by Michael Arad and Peter Walker. The memorial consists of two enormous square hollows into the ground set within the footprint of the original Twin Towers. The hollows are actually water basins, and from around the edges of the two squares, water flows, creating manmade waterfalls, with water cascading down the sides and disappearing into a seemingly bottomless central void. The names of the nearly 3,000 victims of the 2001 and 1993 World Trade Center attacks are inscribed in panels surrounding the pools.

The downward cascade of water into the void creates a strong bodily experience of the falling building, combining the events of that day in 2001 with the experience of the memorial. It literally sets off a pit in the stomach.

At once, it is both a grand and insisting gesture, poetic and delicate.

Again, like the Vietnam Memorial, it is resisting the heroism of past memorials, emphasizing absence as a reminder of loss, inviting visitors to confront the enormity of what is gone rather than offering a sense of resolution.

As such, the memorial is open-ended. It encourages individual reflection and contemplation rather than dictating a single narrative. Doing so constantly creates a living memory of the historical past. The memorial gives the visitor a space to process loss and tragedy in their own way.

This is the power of counter-memorials. They destabilize passive viewing, creating spaces where visitors live through historical consciousness via their bodies, senses, and movements. History is not something fixed and finished. It is not stone tablets handed down from Mount Sinai. Instead of seeing memorials as temples of history and fixed narrative, counter-memorials transform them into performative sites – forums for ongoing, participatory remembrance.

For designers: Can we learn something from the dichotomy of traditional memorials and counter-memorials?

If we transfer the ideas of the counter-memorials to the world of design in general, we might advocate for:

• Prioritize open-endedness and ambiguity – create products, spaces, and interfaces that allow for multiple uses instead of overdetermining the proper use.
• Encourage physical and sensory engagement – invite the user to move, touch, listen, etc.
• Enable participation and co-creation in the use case (not only in the design process) – invite users to contribute, modify, customize, create individual and collaborative spaces
• Foster spaces for reflection and dialogue – focus on moments for pause, contemplation, and conversations
• Embrace impermanence and change – instead of creating something static, embrace that it adapts, evolves, and decays.
• Design for multiple perspectives – offer a multiplicity of entry points and modes of engagement
• Shift from consumption to engagement – design for exploration and discovery

What do you think would happen if we embraced such principles?