As any historian or casual observer of urban transformation might tell you, walls are not everlasting. The following collection examines different ways monuments and notions of monumentality in art and architecture exist in relation to this reality. From Esther Yi's chronicle of the uncertain fate of a section of the Berlin Wall known as the East Side Gallery, to Michael Z. Wise's essay on the Casa Malaparte in Capri, the articles collected in this month's LARB Digital Edition examine the powerful sway of the monumental on our common sense. Also in this issue, Victoria Dailey covers land artist Michael Heizer's LACMA installation, Levitated Mass; Evan Selinger reviews Bianca Bosker's in-depth look at the phenomena of 'duplitecture, ' Original Copies: Architectural Mimicry in Contemporary China; Victoria Bugge Oye reviews the first ever monograph on the acclaimed Postmodern architects Diller, Scofidio, and Renfro; and we look back on architect Joe Day's own monumental undertaking with the Getty's Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L. A.
