The Compassion Teepee

Interesting report in the Observer about an art installation in Liverpool, in which the public can leave messages, including many relating to the recent riots. What is most interesting is where it is: in the bombed church of St Luke, destroyed in 1941 and now in the hands of the city council. The church seems to function as an unofficial war memorial, and has a memorial to the victims of the Irish famine in the grounds. I'm interested that a site of memory should be used for the current installation. See the church website for more; on bombed churches in general, see my article on the subject

How to memorialise 9/11 ?

Interesting article of a few weeks back from Rowan Moore, the Observer's architecture critic, on what it is that is being built at Ground Zero. Although Moore doesn't address the issue directly, there are many artistic assumptions that have to be made if a memorial is to be intelligible; and I wonder how easy that is, in a time of very limited consensus on 'national' art forms and styles.