A Lovely Building for Difficult Knowledge: The Architecture of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights

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Notes

See also Failler's (this issue) contribution to this special issue, which theorizes expression of hope and hopelessness in relation to the museum.

At the time of writing, the original call for architectural proposals for the CMHR could not be accessed. I used the Canadian Competitions Catalogue (“Competition” 2014), published by the Research Chair on Competitions and Contemporary Practices in Architecture at the Université de Montréal, to reference presentation panels for proposals by the finalists (Antoine Predock; Saucier + Perotte; Dan Hanganu; Charles Correa; Michael Maltzan; Mashabane Rose; Schmidt, Hammer and Lassen; Frederic Schwartz). In some specific cases, I could reference the architects’ websites for proposal details and designs, including those of Antoine Predock (2013b); Saucier + Perotte (2014); Dan Hanganu (2014); Charles Correa (2014); Michael Maltzan (2014); Mashabane Rose (2014); Frederic Schwartz (2014); InForm Studio (2014); and Zeidler Partnership Architects (2015).

See Moses (2012) for the history of the controversies surrounding the CMHR planning, which often frames and attenuates the current museum rhetoric about “controversial” and “challenging” content.

Libeskind's design for the Jewish Museum was inspired by the work of specific artists and thinkers who lived in Berlin: Heinrich Kleist, Rahel Varnhagen, Walter Benjamin, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Arnold Schonberg, and Paul Celan. In the report to accompany his design model for the architectural competition, he explained the complex themes underlying his design: “They spiritually affirm the permanent human tension polarized between the impossibility of the system and the impossibility of giving up the search for a higher order. Tragic premonition (Kleist), sublimated assimilation (Varnhagen), inadequate ideology (Benjamin), mad science (Hoffmann), displaced understanding (Schleiermacher), inaudible music (Schonberg), last words (Celan): these constitute the critical dimensions that this work as discourse seeks to transgress” (Libeskind 1990, 48). A void runs throughout the Museum, creating what Libeskind called “an emblem wherein the invisible, the void, has made itself apparent” (1990, 48). In addition to all of the absences and traces that he makes present, he also deliberately incorporated fragmented lines and disruptions to disorient visitors and confront them with uncertainty, including The Garden of Exile, which is built on a 12° gradient to create a profoundly unsettling experience.

See also Karen Sharma's (this issue) contribution to this special issue for a similar critique.

I acknowledge that it would seem that these Deleuzian strategies are contradictory in light of Pitt and Britzman's psychoanalytic approach to difficult knowledge, bearing in mind Deleuze's criticism of psychoanalysis, but I would suggest looking at both philosophies in a Deleuzian way, that is conjunctive rather than oppositional (De Bolle 2010, 9). This approach can therefore “pick up” what is useful in both to work toward a “creative outcome of the encounter between theories” instead of a firm solution to a problem (De Bolle 2010, 10).