根据奥地利建筑师阿道夫·路斯的观点，建筑最诚实的表现是纪念碑与陵墓。这一论断百余年来始终萦绕于建筑师与评论家心间，促使他们思考建筑作为历史文化重要载体的角色。反向观之，亦可言数世纪以来，为求纪念碑与陵墓的诚挚表达，人们始终仰赖建筑去创造并传递关于过往事件或价值体系的应有信息。当世界日益意识到人类命运共同体及不同文明对话的必要性，那种彰显某些价值观而遮蔽其他、优先某些群体或个人而忽略其他的历史呈现方式，正被其他的可以铭记历史并汲取教益的方式所挑战。本课程直面此当代动态，探求建筑设计在传承历史、传达历史重要性等领域的多元路径。

According to the Austrian architect Adolf Loos, the most honest manifestation of architecture was the monument and the tomb. It has been a statement that for more than 100 years have occupied architects and critics, provoking them to consider the role of architecture as an important medium of history and culture.

In reverse, one could say, that for centuries for an honest manifestion of the tomb and the monument, people relied on architecture to create and send the desired message about past events or value systems.

In a world which increasingly becomes aware of the necessity of dialogue and a shared future for all, the traditions of highlighting specific values over others, and prioritizing specific groups or individuals over others, has been challenged by alternative ways to remember history and learn from it.

This course addressed this contemporary dynamic, and explored a variety of options by which architecture and design can vindicate its importance of carrying on and transcending history. 

“ 2024年我从阿姆斯特丹骑车到上海，这一路全靠几样东西撑着：大自然的美、横跨大陆的体力付出，当然还有想走近东方、更深入了解它的愿望。在那条古道上，我在找一种新的丝路。

但日复一日，一公里一公里骑下来，最让我好奇心不断的，是我直接撞见了正在展开的世界历史——那种几千年过去，在当下还能感受到的感觉。

到处都是历史的痕迹。有些是无名的，看不出是谁留下的：是几百年来文化习俗和人类活动一层层积累下来的。另一些则非常显眼——那些纪念碑，记录着某个艺术风格时期，某个关键事件，甚至是历史转折点。是人们挑出来当作合法性、使命感和道德秩序来记住的时刻。

没有一天我不停下来，扶着自行车，端详这样一座用石头、青铜或其他体面材料做成的“宣言”。而且几乎每次，建筑都在强化和传递这个信息上起了决定作用：一个高台、一条林荫道、一段车道；光影的对比；忽然跳出的远景；一个取景框；一条精心设计过的视线。

很明显，从阿姆斯特丹郊外跨过罗马帝国当年的边界线，一直到同济大学那个气派的大门——是建筑在表达权力和价值观，表达情感和怀旧。写到这里，我脑子里就浮现出滑铁卢的狮子山、雅沙尔·凯末尔坐像眺望马尔马拉海、德黑兰的阿扎迪塔，还有敦煌石窟的九层楼阁。

这些纪念碑，有些依然备受敬重，有些已经没人管，明显荒废了。但即便如此，建筑的力量似乎还在拖延——甚至阻止——它们被遗忘。所有这些纪念碑都证明了，建筑有能力通过设计来纪念、来颂扬、来固化某些价值观。恐怕正是这种力量，让阿道夫·路斯在那篇著名的《建筑》里说，只有纪念碑和坟墓，建筑才能算得上是艺术。

2025年秋天，我在同济带了一个设计课，就拿这个观察当起点。我让学建筑的学生们设计一座纪念碑，是想让他们挑战一下——自己的专业在什么情况下能算艺术？在这个建筑师地位被日益理性的建造过程边缘化、AI又在用算法复制“意义”的时代，我想让学生们思考，人们对建筑那种古老的敬重还剩多少。那种敬重曾经把建筑称作“艺术之母”，认为它有象征的力量，能成为秩序、结构和意义的隐喻。

这堂课就是想给学生们留一点空间，让他们去琢磨自己到底还信不信建筑，让建筑把他们心里最在意的东西给做出来。说白了就是：自己选个题，设计一座纪念碑。

16周实验性的设计课下来，回头看他们的成果，我很震撼——这些作品讲述他们各自的文化、他们这代人、他们寻找的意义，还有对我们这个时代深切的关切。”

——授课教师：奥莱·伯曼

“ When I bicycled from Amsterdam to Shanghai in 2024, a few elements held the entire endeavor together: the beauty of nature, the physical effort of crossing a continent, and, of course, the desire to come closer to and more deeply understand the East. I was looking for a New Silk on that Old Road.

But on a daily basis, mile by mile, the most persistent force feeding my curiosity was the way I came face to face with world history unfolding—the way thousands of years can still be felt in the here and now.

There were traces of history everywhere. Some were anonymous, without recognizable authorship: sediments of centuries of cultural customs and human activity. In contrast, others were highly explicit—monuments recalling stylistic periods, crucial episodes, if not critical moments in history. Turning points that people chose to remember as sources of legitimacy, purpose, and moral order.

Not a day passed without me stopping, holding my bike, and contemplating such a statement, executed in stone, bronze, or other respectable materials. And almost always, architecture played a decisive role in securing and amplifying the message: an elevation, an avenue, a driveway; contrasts between light and shadow; a sudden vista; a frame; a carefully directed gaze.

Clearly, from crossing the limes just outside Amsterdam—once the border of the Roman Empire—to the prominent entrance gate of Tongji University in Shanghai, it was architecture expressing power and values, sentiment and nostalgia. Writing this, my thoughts are drawn back to the Lion’s Mound at Waterloo, the statue of a seated Yaşar Kemal gazing over the Sea of Marmara, the Azadi Tower in Tehran , and the Nine-Tiered Pagoda at the caves of Dunhuang.

Sometimes these monuments were still endowed with deep respect; sometimes they were barely maintained, clear cases of neglect. Yet even then, the power of architecture seemed to delay—or even thwart—oblivion. All of these monuments demonstrated architecture’s capacity to commemorate, celebrate, and validate values through design. This power must have been what led Adolf Loos, in his famous essay Architektur, to identify the monument and the grave as the only instances in which architecture could truly be art.

In the fall of 2025, I taught a Tongji design studio that took this observation as its point of departure, challenging architecture students to explore their discipline’s potential to be an art by asking them to design a monument. At a time when architecture is under severe pressure—through the marginalization of the architect in an increasingly rationalized building process, and through the algorithmic reproduction of meaning enabled by AI—I wanted students to reflect on what remains of this age-old respect for architecture. A respect that once defined it as the mother of all arts, endowed with the symbolic power to serve as a metaphor for order, structure, and meaning.

The studio was intended to give students the space to maneuver, to navigate their own faith in architecture, by allowing it to embody what they felt closest to their hearts. In short: to design a monument of their own choosing.

Looking back on an intense sixteen weeks of speculative design, I was struck by what they produced—projects that spoke of their respective cultures, their generation, their search for purpose, and their profound social concerns about the era we are living in.”

——Ole Bouman

让红灯笼在暗处呼吸，这是一个植入重庆现存防空洞的纪念项目。项目把这些防空洞作为记忆的空间载体，把纪念体验融入城市的夜景和日常生活，让记忆存在于那些仍在被使用的空间里。

设计以红灯笼为核心元素。战时，红灯笼曾是防空警报的信号。在这个项目中，红灯笼指向死亡、鲜血，以及重庆大轰炸时期人们的处境。通过把一个熟悉的文化物件转译成预警和哀悼的信号，设计引入了一种克制而有层次的空间语言。

纪念碑沿着防空洞线性、封闭的结构布置。一条拥挤曲折的步道重构了身体的压迫感和受限的移动。裹着红线形成密集空间场域的灯笼，内部嵌入忽明忽暗的光，模拟心跳和呼吸。随着参观者向空间深处移动，灯笼数量逐渐减少，环境越来越暗，建立起一种对应着消逝、幸存和时间流逝的空间节奏。

通过移动、光线和尺度，这座纪念物强调的是身体体验，而非视觉奇观。项目采用分阶段推进的系统：从小型快闪展览开始，到寄生在再利用的防空洞里的记忆节点，最终形成完整的纪念碑。依靠长期机制和公众参与，纪念体是一个可以不断扩展的系统——让记忆延续，并持续存在于城市之中。

Where Red Lanterns Breathe in the Dark is a memorial project inserted into existing air-raid shelters in Chongqing. The project takes these shelters as the spatial carrier of memory and integrates the commemorative experience into the city’s nightscape and everyday urban life, allowing memory to exist within spaces that are still actively used. 

The design uses the red lantern as its key element. During the war, red lanterns functioned as air-raid warning signals. In this project, the red lantern refers to death, blood, and the situation of people during the Chongqing Bombing. By transforming a familiar cultural object into a warning and mourning signal, the design introduces a layered and restrained spatial language. 

The monument is designed within the linear and enclosed structure of air-raid shelters. A crowded and winding pathway reconstructs physical pressure and restricted movement. Lanterns wrapped with red thread form a dense spatial field, while flickering light embedded inside simulates heartbeat and breathing. As visitors move deeper into the space, the number of lanterns gradually decreases and the environment becomes darker, establishing a spatial rhythm that corresponds to disappearance, survival, and the passage of time. 

Through movement, light, and scale, the memorial emphasizes bodily experience rather than visual spectacle. The project is organized as a phased system, progressing from small pop-up exhibitions to parasitic memory nodes within reused shelters, and eventually to complete monuments. Supported by long-term mechanisms and public participation, the memorial operates as an expandable system that allows memory to continue and remain present within the city.

上海快速的城市更新正在侵蚀其层叠的社会景观——那些曾孕育出独特社区凝聚力与非正式交往的公共、半公共与私密空间的复杂交织。这不仅仅是建筑的消逝，更是集体记忆与社会肌理的抹除。作为回应，所提议的纪念碑被构想为一本活态的“空间之书”。其核心目的有二：一是通过让不可见的过往显影，成为见证；二是作为新的公共之心，培育社区认同。项目策略性地选址于老城厢边缘，其形态由暖白色水磨石塑造，隐喻如一页巨纸正被翻开，与上海的建筑文脉直接对话。设计遵循清晰的昼夜节奏：日间，作为可管理的社区基础设施，承载公共活动、会议及共享记忆档案的查阅；夜间，则转化为开放、无预设的聚集与沉思场所。一个关键的互动元素是嵌入式的LED坡面，市民投稿的城市生活影像与视频在此以低分辨率、像素化剪影的形式呈现，并由公众投票筛选。这种方式通过鼓励解读来促成深度参与，确保纪念碑始终是一个动态、可参与的互动平台，而非静止的纪念物。

Shanghai’s rapid urban redevelopment is eroding its layered social landscapes—the intricate weave of public, semi-public, and private spaces that fostered unique community cohesion and informal interaction. This represents not merely architectural loss but the erasure of collective memory and social fabric. In response, the proposed monument is conceived as a living Spatial Book. Its primary purpose is twofold: to bear witness by making the invisible past visible, and to cultivate community by acting as a new civic heart. Strategically sited on the Old City’s edge, its form—crafted from warm white terrazzo—metaphorically resembles a giant page being turned, directly connecting to Shanghai’s architectural heritage. The design operates on a clear day-night rhythm. By day, it functions as managed civic infrastructure for community events, meetings, and access to a shared memory archive. By night, it transforms into an open, unprogrammed public space for gathering and reflection. A key interactive element is an integrated LED slope. Here, citizen-submitted images and videos of urban life are displayed as low-resolution, pixelated silhouettes, curated by public vote. This approach fosters deep engagement by encouraging interpretation, ensuring the monument remains a dynamic, participatory platform rather than a static memorial. 

许多人经历过被误解的痛苦，这些痛苦在不同程度上影响着他们的生活。长期与内心痛苦抗争是危险的——它会让人幸福感下降、情绪波动，进而影响心理健康。因此，有必要通过团体性的疗愈方式进行干预。某些事件会在幸存者或他们亲人心中留下深刻的心理创伤。在无形催化剂的驱动下，拥有相似经历的陌生人因共同的痛苦而聚集在一起，形成互助支持团体。他们开始联合起来，寻找帮助彼此度过悲伤的方法。这座纪念碑希望能成为承载艰辛与悲伤之人的庇护所，带来心理上的疗愈。更进一步，希望能让到访者有可能形成“共享悲伤的共同体”，在那里与处境相似的人建立联系，并达到疗愈的效果。

Many people experience misunderstood pains that affect their lives to varying degrees. Engaging in a prolonged struggle with one's inner suffering is dangerous—it leads to a decline in well-being, with emotion fluctuating, and subsequently impacts mental health. Therefore, intervention through group-based relief methods is necessary. Certain events leave deep psychological wounds in the hearts of survivors or their loved ones. Driven by intangible catalysts, strangers who share similar experiences come together through collective pain, forming mutual support groups known as. They begin to unite and seek ways to help each other navigate their sorrow. The Expected Effect I hope this monument can serve as a sanctuary for those carrying hardship and sorrow, offering psychological healing. Furthermore, I hope it can enable visitors to potentially form ‘Communities of Shared Grief’, where they can establish links with similar people, and achieve a healing effect.

寻真纪念碑旨在帮助人们重新建立联结。它试图挑战并突破固化的社会思维模式，并在这一过程中进一步强化对人本性良善的信念。纪念碑以人类五种恐惧为母题，将五个根本性的、广为人知的议题具象呈现。这些议题皆诞生于危机时刻，并已深植于集体记忆之中。由于人类对负面信息的记忆更为深刻，这座纪念碑选择直面这些恐惧——为的是质疑它们，并最终驳倒它们。

The Seek of Truth Monument is intended to help people reconnect with one another. Its purpose is to challenge and break through well-established social thought patterns, while further strengthening the belief in the goodness inherent in human nature. Through the five fears of humanity, five fundamental and widely recognized themes are exemplarily represented within the monument. These themes originated in times of crisis and have become deeply rooted in collective memory. As humans tend to remember negative information more strongly, the monument deliberately addresses these fears to question and ultimately refute them.

《失败纪念碑》坐落于西班牙力拓矿区被废弃的采矿地貌之中。该方案并不将失败视为一种偶然事故，而是将其理解为人类采掘活动所造就的持久状态。项目无意修复或掩盖场地，而是试图暴露并呈现开采之后遗留的一切。干预基于一个完整球体的隐喻——它代表着地球，被人类行为击碎。碎片部分仍嵌于矿坑之中，部分则被重组为一座位于矿坑边缘的参观构筑物。经由精心设计的下降路径和朝圣般的接近方式，方案让到访者直面不可逆的变迁所留下的物理、空间与物质性后果。

« A monument to failure » is a monument located in the abandoned mining landscape of Rio Tinto, in Spain. The proposal addresses failure not as an accident, but as a lasting condition produced by extractive human activities. Rather than repairing or concealing the site, the project seeks to expose and make visible what remains after exploitation. The intervention is based on the metaphor of a complete sphere, representing the Earth, broken apart by human action. Fragments remain embedded within the mining pit, while others are reassembled into a visitor structure positioned on its edge. Through a carefully descent and pilgrimage-like approach, the project confronts visitors with the physical, spatial and material consequences of irreversible transformation. 

在拉丁美洲，墨西哥失踪人口数量居首且持续增长——2024年登记案例超过11.6万起；哥伦比亚逾8.3万，危地马拉4.5万，阿根廷3万，秘鲁8千。洪都拉斯和萨尔瓦多等国也面临大量失踪案件。

强迫失踪案件充当着恐怖手段，在那些受经济利益和资源开采支配的社区与地域中运作，通过散播恐惧来瓦解社会运动、清除团体成员或领袖，并令试图揭露腐败与有组织犯罪者噤声。由此，亲属们自发集结，组成被称为“搜寻者”或“搜寻集体”的组织，协同追踪秘密坟场、举报案件并伸张正义。

In Latin America, Mexico has the highest and growing number of missing persons, with more than 116,000 cases registered in 2024; Colombia exceeds 83,000, Guatemala has 45,000,  Argentina has 30,000, Peru has 8,000. Other countries such as Honduras and El Salvador also face a high number of disappearances.

The cases of enforced disappearance operate as a method of terror within communities and territories marked by economic interests and resource extraction, spreading fear to disperse social movements, eliminating members or leaders of collectives, and silencing those who seek to denounce corruption and organized crime. Groups of relatives arise, called searchers or search collectives, which organize themselves to track clandestine graves, report cases and demand justice. Imbalance triggers a reaction to the situation, a solemn act of both the land and the surface. The land rises as it can no longer bear to hide more of the disappeared within it, making itself physically and symbolically present in the urban landscape. Meanwhile, the surface turns out to be an open breach for those who are missing, expressing the wound of having someone disappeared, and yearning for the day this gap be filled again. The use of rammed earth as a material, evokes the land itself and is a cheap material, aiming to avoid impacting the client´s budget, conceived as a commission by a social collective or group searching for the disappeared.

过去十年间，数以千计的移民乘坐小船从法国穿越英吉利海峡，抵达英国。他们常常在夜间抵达，挤在原本只容纳四五人的船只里，冒着冰冷凶险的海浪——几十人就这样出现在英国南海岸，这是他们背井离乡、历经险境甚至创伤的漫长旅途的最后一程。然而，当他们踏上这片土地，迎接他们的往往是种族歧视、辱骂，以及一个充满排斥的制度。

这件作品试图围绕英国社会对移民的态度，唤起富有同情心的对话。装置选址于多佛白崖——英国与世界关系的历史象征——通过一系列庇护所的设置，意图让不同政治立场的人们聚在一起，并与移民、难民共同协作，创造一个可以分享、聆听与沉思的空间。

In the last ten years, thousands of migrants have reached the UK in small boats, crossing the English Channel from France. Often arriving at night, squeezed into vessels designed to accommodate four or five and braving dangerously cold and choppy waters, dozens of people arrive on Britain’s south coast, the final leg of a dangerous and often traumatic journey they’ve made to leave their home. And yet when they arrive, many are met with racism, abuse and an intolerant system.

This work aims to generate compassionate discourse around the attitudes towards immigrants in Britain. Based at the White Cliffs of Dover, an historic symbol of Britain’s relationship with the world, the installation of a series of shelters aims to bring together people from across the political spectrum and work in collaboration with immigrants and refugees to create a space for sharing, listening and contemplating.