Noticing the lack of interest in souvenirs from the culture of collectible design, Constantin and Laurene Boym created Buildings of Disaster, a series of 25 miniatures that memorialized the tragic parts of history often less discussed. In Constantin Boym’s words:

“Some of these buildings may have been prized architectural landmarks, other – nondescript anonymous structures. But disaster changes everything. The images of exploded buildings make a different, populist history of architecture, one based on people’s emotional involvement rather than on scholarly appreciation.”

The Boyms succeeded in turning the humble souvenir into a coveted design object. Buildings of Disaster has been featured in over 100 publications worldwide and at one point was being exhibited simultaneously in three New York museums: the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, and the American Craft Museum. Moreover, the objects are inside the permanent collection of the San Francisco MoMA, The Israel Museum in Jersualem, and the Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts in Lausanne.

RETHINKING THE SOUVENIR

For Constantin and Laurene Boym, the souvenir has long been much more than a keepsake. By reducing life size symbols into a small, portable object, the Boyms see souvenirs as a means of carrying complex layers of information, from ‘programmed’ messages to personal sentiments. They are not discriminate in the messages they carry, sometimes positive and others negative: the final three images above, for example, show souvenirs monumentalizing periods of tragedy. From left to right: a piece of the berlin wall, a plaque of the Nuclear Missile Crisis, and sand from the Bay of Pigs, Cuba.

The Boyms became interested in this reverse logic, asking themselves what other less-comfortable histories are worth preserving? Missing Monuments and Buildings of Disaster were their responses.

MISSING MONUMENTS:

Missing Monuments investigated unrealized or destroyed architectural landmarks through souvenirs. For example: a Mesopotamian Ziggurat (2100 B.C.), Aldo Rossi’s floating Teatro Del Mondo for the Venice Biennale (1979), or the Palace of the Soviets (1932-56). In the case of the Palace of the Soviets, this was a 1200 foot tall building considered the most important structure of the Soviet Union - yet it was never actually built. For over 20 years, the designs for the palace were shown prominently in Moscow city plans and guidebooks as if the building actually existed.

The Boyms considered other buildings that had disappeared, were unrealized, or survived through stories and collective memory. After a set of prototypes made in 1995 were featured in Metropolitan Home, the telephone began to ring. This urged the duo to create a first edition of ten buildings.

In 1996 Boym Partners presented an exhibition where Missing Monuments were introduced in a special edition of translucent resin featuring nostalgic pastel colors. Over three hundred tiny miniatures were mounted directly to the tops of the walls, casting long oblique shadows. The only standing object in the space was a pedestal made to look like a shop counter, a witty commentary by the Boyms on how all the objects were indeed for sale - just like all other souvenirs.

During the opening night the show was mobbed by hundreds of guests and the entire stock sold out.

Buildings of Disaster referenced real moments of tragedy or conflict. American histories, environmental disasters and political/governmental scandals were cast in a series of 25 miniatures made from a heavy bonded nickel. The information for these objects was gathered by the Boyms from newspapers and magazines, composed entirely of media representations. When creating the forms themselves, the Boyms “felt [it] important not to get into architectural details, but to allow for generalizations and even distortions to heighten the emotional impact of the object.”

While the notion of souvenirs devoted to tragedy may seem shocking to some, it is a practice based on a long history of precedents. The boyms conceptually reference ‘souvenirs’ like pieces of the Cross and stones from the Golgotha that were brought back by the Crusaders after their voyages to the Holy Land. Or, the souvenirs during the French revolution of 1789: miniature wooden models of the guillotine that were sold throughout Europe and breifly became a popular trend. And finally today, it is possible to buy pieces of the Berlin Wall on eBay. Thus, Buildings of Disaster explores the category of souvenir at a special and uncertain moment of our human history.

Many collectors consider the Buildings of Disaster strange and eccentric artworks, however the Boyms originally created them as objects of design, not art. They were requested via mail-order catalog and were originally priced at only $95/piece. They embodied what Constantin Boym describes as “fuzzy function: they fulfill a need that is elusive and immaterial.” These miniatures transformed sites of catastrophe into objects of remembrance and design. Subjects ranged from the Unabomber’s cabin and the O.J. car chase to the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant and the World Trade Center.

THE WORLD TRADE CENTER & SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

By 2001, Buildings of Disaster was essentially complete and production had stopped. The events of September 11th, however, unexpectedly transformed both the project and the Boyms’ understanding of it.

The same day after witnessing the collapse of the North Tower, Constantin returned to his studio and received many phone calls inquiring about the World Trade Center souvenir. Initially uncomfortable with the idea, the Boyms reconsidered after hearing directly from people who had worked in the building during the attack.

As a result, the original World Trade Center miniature which was made to honor the Feb 26, 1993 bombing was reissued to raise money for the September 11 Fund. Then, in November of 2001 the September 11 Memorial Set was created which included a new World Trade Center miniature and one of the Pentagon as well.

Now, an object originally conceived partly as a provocation had acquired an unexpected mnemonic function: people were using the miniatures as personal objects through which to put their feelings into.

World Trade Center

Originally part of Buildings of Disaster, the World Trade Center took on an entirely new meaning after September 11, 2001. The Boyms reissued the miniature as a fundraiser for the September 11 Fund and later created a memorial set incorporating the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

The Unabomber’s Cabin

The remote Montana cabin where Ted Kaczynski lived and was arrested in 1996. Reduced to a miniature souvenir, the otherwise unremarkable structure demonstrates how an ordinary building can become culturally significant through the history attached to it.

Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant

A miniature commemorating the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986. The object translates the enormous and largely invisible consequences of technological catastrophe into the intimate scale of a souvenir.

Oklahoma City Federal Building

The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, destroyed in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The miniature preserves the architecture as it became fixed in collective memory: inseparable from the event that ultimately destroyed it.

The Texas School Book Depository

The Dallas building from which Lee Harvey Oswald is alleged to have shot President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Like many works in the series, an otherwise ordinary piece of architecture becomes a monument through its association with a defining historical event.

The Waco Seige

The Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, site of the deadly 1993 siege. Its inclusion transforms a place largely remembered through news imagery into a physical object of memory.

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