Meister, Anna-Maria Therese (Author)
Journal for the History of Knowledge
Volume: 4
Publication date: 2023
Language: English
The more than 400,000 cubic-meters of concrete meant to contain the deadly debris of the largest nuclear accident of the 20th century in Chernobyl in the Ukraine were named “Sarcophagus” in the Western world— an architectural term describing the stone enclosure of a dead body. It would not remain the only structure built to contain the catastrophic fallout. After 1986, the supposedly ever-durable material of modern architecture started to crumble under the radiation. A new enclosure needed to take shape. In an international architecture competition held in 1992 by the Ukrainian government, an arch was chosen as “New Safe Confinement” (NSC) to keep the toxic matter sealed inside. Built from steel this time, this new shell was completed after lengthy delays in July 2019—a monument containing a brutalist radioactive ruin. Its building technology, implemented to delay leakage to protect future human generations, in turn needs those very generations precisely for its own maintenance. This article poses the many hulls of Chernobyl as architectural palimpsest: a deathly bind of matter and time, of decay, ruin, and construction in the fall-out’s ongoing aftermath. Written as history of architectural knowledge, the making space for a destructive non-human occupant (under human care) turns a seemingly straightforward architectural narrative into the story of a structure built too late to keep the world around it inhabitable.
...MoreArticle Hansun Hsiung; Laetitia Lenel; Anna-Maria Meister (2023) Introduction: Entangled Temporalities. Journal for the History of Knowledge (pp. 9-32).
Similar Citations
Book
Schmid, Sonja D.;
(2015)
Producing Power: The Pre-Chernobyl History of the Soviet Nuclear Industry
Article
Hilary Brown;
(June 2018)
Keeping the Lights On: A Comparison of Normal Accidents and High Reliability Organizations
Book
Tatiana Kasperski;
(2020)
Les politiques de la radioactivité: Tchernobyl et la mémoire nationale en Biélorussie contemporaine
Article
Wellock, Thomas R.;
(2013)
The Children of Chernobyl: Engineers and the Campaign for Safety in Soviet-designed Reactors in Central and Eastern Europe
Article
Gerstenberger, Katharina;
(2014)
Störfälle: Literary Accounts from Chernobyl to Fukushima
Book
Olga Kuchinskaya;
(2014)
The Politics of Invisibility: Public Knowledge about Radiation Health Effects After Chernobyl
Article
Sahm, Astrid;
(2013)
Atomenergie in Ost- und Westeuropa: Reaktionen auf Tschernobyl und Fukushima
Article
Laetitia Lenel;
(2023)
Survivor Testimonies and the Problem of Time
Article
Thomas Erslev;
(2018)
A brain worth keeping? Waste, value and time in contemporary brain banking
Article
Goldstein, Donna M.;
Stawkowski, Magdalena E.;
(2015)
James V. Neel and Yuri E. Dubrova: Cold War Debates and the Genetic Effects of Low-Dose Radiation
Article
Leslie, Stuart W.;
(2013)
Aerospaces: Southern California Architecture in a Cold War World
Book
Vanderbilt, Tom;
(2010)
Survival City: Adventures among the Ruins of Atomic America
Book
Alfredo Thiermann Riesco;
(2024)
Radio-Activities: Architecture and Broadcasting in Cold War Berlin
Thesis
Layne Karafantis;
(2016)
Under Control: Constructing the Nerve Centers of the Cold War
Book
Alice Isabella Sullivan;
Kyle G. Sweeney;
(2023)
Lateness and Modernity in Medieval Architecture
Book
Kate (Kathryn L. ) Brown;
(2019)
Manual for survival : a Chernobyl guide to the future
Article
Valerie Arnhold;
(2021)
Normalisation of nuclear accidents after the Cold War
Article
Melanie Arndt;
(April 2018)
The Babushkas of Chernobyl
Article
Sonja D. Schmid;
(October 2020)
Chernobyl the TV Series: On Suspending the Truth or What's the Benefit of Lies?
Article
Schmid, Sonja D.;
(2004)
Transformation Discourse: Nuclear Risk as a Strategic Tool in Late Soviet Politics of Expertise
Be the first to comment!