非裔美国人历史文化国家博物馆是如何在国家广场创造出“空间阻力”
How the NMAAHC Carves Out a "Space of Resistance" on the National Mall

由专筑网刘彤，韩平，武晨编译

这篇文章，原本命名为“空间阻力”，曾经出版在Lance Hosey的博客里面。它是非裔美国人历史文化国家博物馆中包含四部分的一个系列中的一部分。

城市可以成为一个强大的政治神话，华盛顿特区就是首要代表。

政治神话中因意识形态的目的性而发生的戏剧性的历史事件，都是为了强化现状的权威性。例如，美国的开国元勋形式扮演着一种源自于为了大众自由和平等的政治的渴望而存在的具有积极性的人，一种在革命的背后忽略了复杂的社会经济实力的极简的描述。

国家广场中的建筑和他的存在价值的永久性，是美国在石头和空间中显而易见的原始文化。曼费雷多•塔夫里形容哥伦比亚特区的形象为“永恒的、无可争论的、完全具有积极性的天堂”这种创造是“预设非常乐观并且完全任何挑起争议的疑问”的。

在这个意义上，城市作为政治神话已经在应对抗议方面较为成熟，并且国家广场已经在美国历史上多次成为大多数重要抗议的选址。无论如何，他们都与建筑有关。

This article, originally titled "The Space of Resistance," was originally published on Lance Hosey's Huffington Post blog. It is part of a four-part series about the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
The city can be a powerful form of political myth, and Washington, DC, is the premier example.
Political myths dramatize historical events for ideological purposes, in order to strengthen the authority of the status quo. For example, America’s Founding Fathers often are portrayed as motivated only by a virtuous desire for universal freedom and equality, a simplistic depiction that ignores the complex socioeconomic forces behind the Revolution.
The National Mall, its buildings, and its monuments, are America’s foundation myth writ large in stone and space. Manfredo Tafuri called the image of the District of Columbia “a timeless, indisputable, completely ‘positive’ Olympus” whose creation “presupposed great optimism and was thoroughly opposed to any polemical doubt.”
In this sense, the city as political myth is ripe for protest, and the National Mall has been the site of many of the most important protests in American history. Most often, these events consist only of people gathering for demonstration. Sometimes, however, they involve building.


Image © NMAAHC

十六年以前，我撰写了一篇关于“抗议建设”的短文，其中就涉及到建筑物作为一种呼吁社会关注或者表达政治不满而被建设。其中一个例子就是复活城市，在1968年，贫穷人民在国家广场设置临时营地作为抗议。具有代表性的抗议建设是临时的而且缺乏正式性，而且，这通常是违法的。新的非裔美国人历史文化国家博物馆是一种稀有的永恒性的例子，拥有着许多具有抗议性建设的一种正式的建筑风格。

博物馆被新古典建筑风格的建筑围绕，并且管理者争论说“这个建筑的建筑风格在他的基础和柱子部分模仿了古典希腊罗马的形式，一种资本主义的突破。”但是，观察者对这栋建筑的第一印象是觉得他与众不同。一方面，广场中大部分标志性建筑都包含有大片的白色或者米黄色的石头，非裔美国人历史文化国家博物馆的青铜色金属窗饰则是一种高雅而引人注目的改变。阿德迦耶，引领了这种设计，描述他的设计意图为“一种位于广场中的低调的存在。”就像我在早期文章中叙述的一样，广场中具有大多数石头的会成为标志建筑，包括史密森尼“城堡”就是由奴隶在采石场采集材料，并拒绝这种为新的博物馆而使用这种材料来抗议威胁这份遗产。马克思•邦德，在2009年他去世之前的日子作为设计团队的一员，曾因与非裔美国人工会联系选择建筑材料而众所周知，他也是我曾描述为“材料鉴定”的策略人。他同时也致力于另一方面——避免材料出现不和谐的关系。建筑的格子的部分灵感来源于美国的南方腹部黑人劳动者的铁制品，但是他依然形成了方平组织图案的传统。

Sixteen years ago, I coined the phrase “protest construction” to refer to structures erected as a means of calling attention to a social or political grievance. An example is Resurrection City, a temporary encampment on the National Mall as part of the Poor People’s Campaign in 1968. Protest construction typically is temporary and informal, and often it is unauthorized. The new National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) is a rare example of permanent, formal architecture with many of the traits of protest construction.
The museum is surrounded by neoclassical architecture, and the administrators contend that “the building’s architecture follows classical Greco-Roman form in its use of a base and shaft, topped by a capital.” Yet, the viewer’s first impression of the building is that it’s different. For one thing, most of the iconic structures on the Mall consist of large expanses of white or beige stone, and the NMAAHC’s bronze-colored metal tracery is an elegant but dramatic departure. David Adjaye, who led the design, describes its intent as “a dark presence on the Mall.” As I recounted in an earlier article, much of the stone of the Mall’s most recognized buildings, including the Smithsonian “Castle,” was quarried by slaves, and rejecting that material for the new museum resists that legacy. Max Bond, who served on the design team prior to his death in 2009, was known for selecting building materials associated with African American labor unions, a strategy I once described as “material justice.” It also works in reverse—by avoiding materials with difficult associations. The building’s latticework is inspired in part by the ironwork of Black laborers in the Deep South, but it also conjures up images of basket weaving traditions.


© Alan Karchmer/NMAAHC

博物馆的形式完成了拥有丰富内涵但是又看起来几乎是全新的这个几乎不可能的工作。这种三层结构的“冠状物”与非洲西部的头发编梳的样式非常相似，一种象征着荣誉的庆祝图案，但同时这个词语指的是古典檐口顶层。历史学家乔治•赫西曾经说过冠状物这个词在古典建筑学里边具有双重含义，表达了从属（在罗马当一名囚犯被带走，他或者她就会被称为替补冠状物）和解放（一副鹰的翅膀）。建筑中非裔美国人历史文化国家博物馆的展品承认在阿丁克拉符号中的灵感意味中独立与奴役的双重含义。锯齿状轮廓的冠状物同时会令人回想起奴隶们用打碎的陶器来纪念埋葬遗址的习惯，标志着精神从肉体中解脱。在博物馆中将近三分之二，包含着整个历史展览，它是隐蔽的，并且这种罩起来的形式给人一种从地下露出来，发掘某些埋葬的东西的感觉。

评论者已经制作了这个冠状物的许多角度来与华盛顿纪念碑顶石相匹配（尽管是倒置的），他的观点从整个内部框架出发。通过它与一个尖顶细节和另一个则似乎过度扩展的关系来诠释整个建筑的形式，并且它也近似是一个给奴隶主的奇怪的贡品。到底是为什么呢？在某种意义上，这种姿态只是简单地承认了非洲（埃及）纪念碑的起源，就是方尖碑。但是方尖碑这个词语照字面意思应解释为“太阳神柱”或者“太阳神的生殖器官”，太阳神作为古老的上帝的敬语。一个方尖碑就是一个阴茎，一个合适的形象作为“国家之父”但是同时也是一个传统的权利的象征。通过倒置他，博物馆既承认又破坏着这个图像。

The museum’s form accomplishes the improbable task of being rich in references but seemingly completely new. The three-tiered “corona” echoes West Africa headdresses, a celebratory image of honor, but the term also refers to the top layer of a classical cornice. Historian George Hersey has shown that the corona has a dual meaning in classical architecture, evoking both subordination (“in Rome when a prisoner was taken he or she was said to be sub corona”) and liberation (“a pair of eagle’s wings”), so the museum’s corona could refer to captivity and freedom at the same time. The NMAAHC’s exhibit on the building acknowledges inspiration in Adinkra symbols meaning both independence (Fawohodie) and slavery (Epa). The serrated profile of the corona also is reminiscent of the practice of slaves marking burial sites with broken pottery, symbolizing the release of the spirit from the body. Nearly two-thirds of the museum, including the entire history exhibit, is subterranean, and the overall form has the sense of emerging from below, unearthing something buried.
Reviewers have made much of the corona’s angles matching (though upside down) the capstone of the Washington Monument, whose view is framed throughout the interior. To explain the form of a whole building through its relationship with a finial detail of another seems over-inflated, and it’s an odd tribute to a slave-owner. What’s going on here? In one sense, this gesture simply acknowledges the African (Egyptian) origins of the monument’s form, the obelisk. But the word obelisk literally means “Baal’s shaft” or “Baal’s organ of reproduction,” Baal being an ancient honorific for “lord.” An obelisk is a phallus, a fitting image for “the father of the country” but also a traditional symbol of power. By inverting it, the museum both acknowledges and undermines that image.


Image © Lance Hosey

主入口位于在广场的侧面，以一个巨大的独立式的棚顶为标志，博物馆称之为“一个欢迎廊道，源自非洲和非洲散居的建筑风格，特别是在南美洲和加勒比海”。在南北战争以前的种植园生活记录中，这也暗示着敌对的关系逐渐缓和。而这个突出的门廊而形成市民纳凉的空间。但是，这个廊道，通常只在种植园的“大房子”上部分可以看到，同时也是威望的符号，博物馆的“门廊”从建筑中脱离出来，似乎在与这种特别的历史做对抗。历史学家约翰米迦勒瓦拉几写到，在种植园中的奴隶们形成了一种独特的空间感与场地：“黑色地域定义通常被微妙并秘密的方式形成，并且大多数可能不会被奴隶主意识到，”并且“这种简单行为上的占领一块空间无异于占有他。”

The main entrance, on the Mall side, is marked by an enormous freestanding canopy the museum calls “a welcoming porch, which has architectural roots in Africa and throughout the African Diaspora, especially the American South and Caribbean.” Accounts of plantation life in the Antebellum South suggest that even hostile relationships became easier to endure “in the civil atmosphere offered by the shade of a prominent porch.” Yet, the porch, often the most visible part of the “Big House” on a plantation, also was a symbol of prestige, and the museum’s “porch” is detached from the building, as if to resist that particular history. Historian John Michael Vlach writes that on plantations slaves developed a unique sense of space and place: “Black territorial definitions were often made in subtle or clandestine ways and probably went unrecognized by most slaveowners,” and “the simple act of occupying a space was tantamount to appropriating it.”


© Alan Karchmer/NMAAHC

当它标志出主入口的时候，博物馆的“门廊”面朝着广场，远离宪法大道。这个国家广场就被轮换着称为“美国前院”和“美国后院。”这是一个前廊或者后廊么？从某个距离上来看，这个建筑是几乎完全相同的四个方面，因此，他没有明显的前面或者后面。这种不确定性看起来与阿迪亚耶的评论有关，那就是“这个非裔美国人博物馆绝对完全的理解美国同一性但是又某种意义上总是感觉处于密室之中。”

While it marks the main entrance, the museum’s “porch” faces the Mall, away from Constitution Avenue. The National Mall is alternately called “America’s Front Yard” and “America’s Backyard.” Is this a front porch or a back porch? From a distance, the building is virtually identical on all fours sides, so it doesn’t have an obvious front or back. This uncertainty seems related to Adjaye’s comment that “the African-American community is absolutely integral to understanding the American identity but somehow has been always in the back room.”


Image © Alan Karchmer/NMAAHC

在博物馆的开幕式上，奥巴马总统评论到，“这是一个地方来让大家明白怎样抗议并爱这个国家，不只是和平共处而是要告知每个人。”在其展品及建筑方面，博物馆既是一个用于庆祝欢乐又是一个用于反抗的空间。投射于博物馆文化展示墙体上的字是作者贝尔的名言：“人们通过他们的故事抵抗。”广场中的其他博物馆在他们的主题中必须去处理历史冲突，但是没有一个做的可以像这个一般优雅。

这篇文章是Lance Hosey在非裔美国人历史文化国家博物馆中包含四部分系列中的一部分。

At the museum’s opening, President Obama remarked, “This is the place to understand how protest and love of country don’t merely coexist but inform each other.” In its exhibits and its architecture, the museum is a joyous celebration but also space of resistance. Projected on the wall of the museum’s culture exhibit are the words of author bell hooks: “People resist by telling their story.” Other museums on the Mall have had to address conflicted histories in their subjects, but none has done so with such grace.
This article is part of a four-part series by Lance Hosey on the NMAAHC. Click the following links to read about how the museum reveals the complicated political history of Washington, DC, what the museumreveals about architectural criticism, and how the museum embraced sustainability.


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