Rebuilding Violent Places

     The buildings and environments in which people spend their time have striking effects on the emotions, memories, and recollections people establish with these places, both good and bad.  New Yorker correspondent Thomas de Monchaux explores these connections in the architectural context of rebuilding environments scarred by gun violence in an article entitled “Rebuilding Violent Places.”  He does this through examining the Oslo design firm, Fantastic Norway, responsible for rebuilding the Labor Youth Party summer camp on Utoya Island in Norway after July 2011 shootings.  De Monchaux stresses the quandaries associated with these architectural undertakings between wanting to start afresh but conversely leave some indications of what happened, so people do not forget.

     The article opens with several anecdotes that briefly outline places of recent gun violence, beginning with the 2006 Amish school shooting and progressing to the recent Sandy Hook shooting.  This overview reveals the scope of gun violence and thus the many repercussions this violence creates, putting the need for design firms like Fantastic Norway into context.  While the progression of the dates of these examples (2006 to 2012, 2007 to 2013) is not in exact chronological order, the repeating pattern of past to more recent helps to portray the shootings as cyclical happenings. 

     The anecdotes additionally appeal to the audience’s cultural memories of gun violence by bringing negative emotions of violence to the surface.  However, de Monchaux also adds to these memories by including the rebuilding process of shooting environments in his descriptions.  These descriptions are enriched through assonance, used by de Monchaux to describe the footprints of the twin towers as “...inviolately unbuildable in perpetuity—an act of polemical and political remembering,” (2).  The stressed ih sound in the words inviolately unbuildable in perpetuity, coupled with the ol, ic and al sounds in polemical and political, enhance his delivery by creating flow and cadence within his words.

     All of the small associations and connections that de Monchaux establishes with the audience help his points about creation in places marked by violence to be remembered.  The article seems to be directed towards a worldwide audience curious about architecture and how it influences sensations.  As a result, de Monchaux does successfully accomplish his purpose and leaves the reader pondering the future of “violent places” long after they finish the article.