Art: Ruins as Monuments

The Architectural Review, Britain’s No. 1 architectural magazine, recently declared that the ruins of Britain’s bombed churches are more eloquent war monuments than any that could be dreamed up after the war. It proposed to select from the country’s 4,000 blitzed churches a few in London and other British cities “to remain with us as ruins, essentially in the state in which bombing has left them. . . .”

The Review also proposed a careful cleanup of the ruins, some necessary rearrangement, some landscaping. The blitzed churches would then be used as places of open-air worship, meditation, rest.