Walter Benjamin, a Spanish writer, once wrote in "An Outline of the Philosophy of History" that "it is more difficult to commemorate the unknown than the well-known; the construction of history is dedicated to the memory of the unknown." In the choice of subjects for monumental architectural design, the writing of the unknown is worthy of our attention. This is not only because the stories of the unknown are more easily forgotten, but also because most of those who made history are none other than the unknown as ordinary people.

In Chongming, Shanghai, there is a memorial converted from a water tower, the Mortal Memorial, which pays tribute to every ordinary person who fought bravely in times of crisis. The memorial was designed by the architectural firm Wutopia Lab, founded by architect Ting Yu. The monumental building was originally an abandoned water tower at Dongtanyuan (the former 12th Company of the Outpost Farm), a subsidiary of Bright Food (Group). At the beginning of the renovation the client wanted to transform the tower into a cafe or hotel suite that would complement the adjacent conference center and hotel, but with the end of the Yu Ting couple's treatment and isolation in the hospital, the project was revisited with a new perspective on life.

In the 1950s and 1960s, in order to produce more food, Chongming Island saw the rise of a vigorous sand reclamation project. 1959 saw the establishment of the Polder Preparatory Committee, approved by the Shanghai Municipal Government, and the establishment of a Polder Command Department. The polder crew needed to build 22 kilometers of embankment in 15 days to build a dam to intercept the flow. One of the harbor branches named Xiao Hong, which flows from east to west into the Yangtze River, is 4,000 meters long and more than 250 meters wide at the entrance. Winter water is very cold, the dam is about to close, the command has sunk three boats full of rocks into the closure, but the current is still turbulent, the dam is in danger of collapse. In the emergency moment, a female worker named Lu Jingjuan took the lead and jumped into the dam's closing mouth, blocking it with her body, followed by more than a hundred young people who were inspired to jump into the river and stand with Lu Jingjuan at the gap of the dam, the water finally smoothed out, filling in the soil and successfully closing the dam. Lu Jingjuan's body embodies a spirit of sacrificing the ego to achieve the greater good, and this spirit is still valuable in the current era.

Life is fragile, and people in trouble need to fight hard to find hope. Yu Ting saw in Lu Jingjuan's body not only heroic spirit, but also Shanghai and Shanghai people of that era. The Mortal Memorial not only commemorates the heroic spirit of Lu Jingjuan, but also carries the history, culture and memory of Shanghai and its people.

The water tower was originally built to provide safe drinking water for the polder workers and was the central symbol of the polder workers' dormitory area. wutopia Lab, in its new creative direction, sees the water tower as a breach in the dike, retaining the original water tower facade while designing a separate spiral staircase structure inside, consisting of 100 steps and 84 50 cm diameter metal rods, thus creating a tower-within-a-tower structure to symbolize the heroic acts of the unsung heroes who, together with Lu Jingjuan, plugged the leak with their bodies.

At the bottom of the spiral staircase is a map of Shanghai, with the year engraved on each step, 100 steps symbolizing a century, while the metal rods are engraved with a chronology of events. Meanwhile, on the walls of the water tower's storage barn are murals made from photo transfers of polder scenes from that year, expressing a sublime tribute to the heroes. As you walk up the steps, you can see the history of the polder project and the names of the ordinary workers who dedicated their youth here. Walking up the steps to the top of the water tower, Wutopia Lab uses a glass cover and light design to turn the water tower into a memorial lighthouse, looking into the distance where the farms have been transformed into modern fields, with the sea, sky and land intertwined, reflecting the clear polder boundary line. Just like the scene depicted by British author Virginia Woolf in "To the Lighthouse": "As the sun sets, the clear outline disappears, the silence rises and spreads like a mist, the wind stops and the trees are still, and the whole world sways loosely and lies down to sleep." The unity, courage and fearlessness of Lu Jingjuan infected generations of people, and nowadays, when the epidemic is raging, Shanghai people are still united, courageous and fearless, and many "unsung heroes" have emerged in the front line of the epidemic. This is more a spiritual legacy.

Article Source:艺术与设计

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