OPINION
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Is the Australian War Memorial a memorial or is it a museum? Is it both? Can it be both? Can it be a house of artifacts - the machinery of war - and a solemn place of quiet remembrance.
![Architects' simulation of the expansion of Australian War Memorial. Architects' simulation of the expansion of Australian War Memorial.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/fdcx/doc780xx3arc2e5cmgzbhq.jpg/r0_546_3780_2671_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
That seems to me to be the nub of the question about whether to like the spectacular design for the grand expansion, which was unveiled by the Prime Minister.
And spectacular and grand the architects' vision certainly is.
Forget questions of cost for a moment. Great architecture demands money. It's easy to get caught up in the argument over a spectacular new building versus badly needed schools or better hospital treatment - and those arguments are valid and grist to the mill of journalists.
But the great modern buildings of our time - the ones that we remember (and that eventually pay back the millions of dollars through tourist visits) - are ones that cost taxpayers mightily in the short term. Just think of the Sydney Opera House.
In the case of the Australian War Memorial, the architects (and their video producers) have done a great job in conveying the sweeping imagination of their design, particularly the glass tunnel and walk-ways from the new entrance.
The all-important iconic facade as viewed up Anzac Parade seems to be preserved. All the architectural heavy lifting is behind and below the profile, sometimes underground and sometimes stretching way back.
But to look at the new design from the sky, as the architects do with their imaginary drone flight over the gleaming structure, is to see its full extent. It is to realise how much the memorial is expanding into a museum - and that morphing will surely change the balance and the atmosphere.
I am something of a connoisseur of war memorials. I have sat and thought in awed silence in the tomb-like memorials in Melbourne and Sydney as well as on the fields of Flanders. I have sat for hours in the vast Red Army memorial in east Berlin commemorating the 80,000 Soviet soldiers who died liberating the city. They were buried on the battlefield and their presence haunts the memorial.
And I have wept at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington at the sight of children tracing their fingers through the engraved names of uncles they never knew.
It seems to me that remembrance is a sacred, deeply emotional act and to put a huge museum near any of these sites risks detracting from the ability to reflect. A quiet space can be violated by the ring of a till in the museum shop. At its worst, it can seem like sacrilege.
The Australian War Memorial, it sometimes seems, doesn't quite know its purpose, though its director and the Prime Minister at the unveiling of the new design would disagree.
But is it a memorial or is it a museum? It's not easy for it to be both. The crowding around the weaponry might divert the mind from the solemness of remembrance.
Seeing the architects' vision in its detail brings home the scale of the expansion and the change in its nature - seemingly from a memorial with a museum attached to a museum with a memorial as a vestibule.
There are good military museums, ones that make you think about the horror of war.
In Dresden, the German military museum gets it right. It displays the scorched pavement stones from the city on the night it was firebombed by, among others, Australian airmen, but it displays these graphic pieces of horror alongside the paving stones from cities which the Nazis bombed. It is a thoughtful juxtaposition.
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There is a debate to be had about whether the Australian War Memorial gets it right. It's true there is a helmet with a bullet gash in the side that brings home that war means sudden death.
But there are also "toys for boys" - big war machines disconnected from their purpose. There is a fascination with war that borders on voyeurism and I can be as guilty as any of indulging in it - but I don't like the feeling.
The architects, it seems to me, have done a grand job with their skills. Their conception will please many.
But for others, architectural achievement is not the point.
Do we want a quiet place of remembrance or do we want a museum - and if we do, how do we stop it becoming a theme park?