Memorial for Bhopal Gas Tragedy Victims

Soumitro Ghosh; Nisha Mathew Ghosh

This is a topography that weaves within and without, blurring the relationship of the object and subject of the gaze. The role of architecture becomes one of relation with space as a living entity. Architecture and landscape here are no longer two sides of the coin but one and the other simultaneously. It is a field of political, social and spatial conflict. Architecture and landscape simultaneously position themselves in this zone of conflict.

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Ghosh, Soumitro, and Nisha Mathew Ghosh. Architects' Statement In Memorial for Bhopal Gas Tragedy Victims. Mathew and Ghosh Architects, 2005.

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Entry for Visitors © Mathew and Ghosh Architects

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Entry for Visitors © Mathew and Ghosh Architects

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Entry Court © Mathew and Ghosh Architects

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Ritual Plaza © Mathew and Ghosh Architects

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Impression Court © Mathew and Ghosh Architects

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Impression Court © Mathew and Ghosh Architects

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Chronology Passage © Mathew and Ghosh Architects

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Ritual Plaza © Mathew and Ghosh Architects

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Impression Court © Mathew and Ghosh Architects

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The purpose of a project like this at the site of disaster after 20 years is surely meant to see that our short memory does not relegate this irresponsible accident and loss to burial. We have decided to remember and have placed our faith in the physical act of presence / absence on the site as a potential tool.

Walter Benjamin considers history is inevitably distorted to serve the dominant powers and its objectification carries the distortion in its presentation of its view of history as fact. Memory in its fragmented recollection of the past becomes the primary means of individual resistance of the hegemony of history in this context. Hence the import of memory and more so of the collective.

The architecture of the memorial and its capacity to generate a cognitive notion of a place of an immense industrial human tragedy is based on a two-fold assumption. Firstly, a physical presence / absence of physical elements can trigger involuntary memories. Secondly, and more importantly, the act of ritual and ritual routes as operative agents of social memory.

The engagement of the body, repetitive acts of veneration, shared actions and associated social behavior in and around such a place makes a collective memory. While the former inscribes’ the latter ‘incorporates’. The latter being of greater import and capacity than the former in the ability to create a memory that sustains. Without the articulation of the engagement of the self (and the collective self more so) it therefore is impossible to make collective memory (which encapsulates the setting of the man-made by the former process), even if in parts.