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A plan to erect a 10-storey statue in a national park on one of Canada’s most scenic shorelines has prompted outrage and sparked a growing political row [...].
The statue of Mother Canada – a cloaked female figure with her arms outstretched towards the Atlantic Ocean – is intended to honour the country’s soldiers who died overseas.
But growing anger over the plan has made it a new focus of opposition to the increasingly unpopular government of Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper.
— theguardian.com
In Orange, Texas, the Texas Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans just built a large Confederate memorial park, complete with a classical-ish monument featuring 13 columns—one for each of the states in the short-lived, and utterly defeated, Confederate States of America. [...]
And this being Confederate sympathizers, they did not hesitate to build the memorial where the highway meets Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
— citylab.com
Related:Building the First Slavery Museum in AmericaHow America is failing to preserve its historic slave markets View full entry
In 2010, a sanctuary in Santiago was completed in [Hurtado's] honor — at the very site where he founded the Hogar de Cristo back in the 1940s. The building was designed by Chilean architect Cristián Undurraga, of Undurraga Devés Arquitectos, and it is elegant and serene — a true space of contemplation. It also makes the most of simple materials: rough Béton brut concrete, glass blocks and blond wood ceilings that don't overwhelm the artifacts on display... — Los Angeles Times
Calming photos of the Santiago-based memorial museum, which Chilean architect Cristián Undurraga designed in honor of Jesuit priest Father Alberto Hurtado and his humanitarian work. View full entry
Before Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha was killed on Feb. 10, she had an epiphany in her architecture class. [...]
"Within a few moments after we began the demonstration, she lit up like she completely got it. In her eyes, I remember the most, just the kindness in her eyes. Behind those deep eyes, a little bulb went on, and she no longer needed me. It's the moment any teacher wants to have with their students, like, 'OK, they get it, you can go now.'
— indyweek.com
See also: Razan Abu-Salha, Architecture Student: A Small Memorial View full entry
It’s easy enough to blame economic forces for the postwar destruction of slave markets, but not for the persistent concealment of their history. One hundred and fifty years after the Civil War, the South has no shortage of memorials to the Lost Cause, while memorials to the slave trade remain few and far between. [...]
After the Civil War, Johnson says, “the price of moving forward for the white United States was the forgetting of slavery.”
— citylab.com
Blumberg doesn’t understand why a memorial to victims of communism was given such an “incredibly prominent, almost sacrosanct” site. “It is so centrally placed that it would seem to quite overshadow Canada’s true history.” [...]
"I have a massive problem, a huge problem, with this memorial going on that site. I think it completely misrepresents and skews what Canada is all about.”
— ottawacitizen.com
Previously: Winner of the Canadian National Memorial to Victims of Communism View full entry
ABSTRAKT Studio Architecture was chosen to design Canada's future National Memorial to Victims of Communism in Ottawa...The team was selected out of six finalists at the end of the two-phase national design competition held this summer. The memorial will pay tribute to the more than 100 million people around the globe who suffered or perished under communist dictatorship, as well as educate the public about the heavy consequences caused by communism. — bustler.net
As a national memorial, it will also signify Canada's role in offering refuge to those who escaped that oppression. It will be located on Confederation Boulevard beside the Supreme Court of Canada, the Library and Archives Canada, the Peace Tower, and other key federal... View full entry
In honor of Veterans Day 2014, Archinect put together a collection of memorials and architectural projects devoted to U.S. veterans.Architecture for Recovery: IDEO and Michael Graves Design a Home for Disabled Military Veterans: The Wounded Warrior homes aim to personalize and make accessible... View full entry
When a well-intentioned Alabama teenager tweeted a smiling selfie taken at Auschwitz-Birkenau, she attracted a deluge of hatred and outrage from across the internet. Lambasted as disrespectful, insensitive and inappropriate, the selfie was later explained as a means of memorializing her visit to... View full entry
Neighborhoods of contemporary New York are primarily defined by the choices and actions of the people who call them home. They are collages fashioned from layer upon layer of small accretions that we plaster and paint onto our environments. Sometimes, this paint is literal [...] rich diversity of murals in memoriam found throughout Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn — public artworks that reflect a particular history of violence, racial prejudice, and, in some cases, the mixture of the two. — urbanomnibus.net
Related: Bed-Stuy Prices Soar View full entry
[...] Frank Gehry has once again revised his design for a long-delayed memorial to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, removing two controversial metal tapestries that would have flanked the installation and two columns.
The revised design was shown today to the National Capital Planning Commission, whose members for the most part seemed receptive to moving forward with the plan. But discussion over remaining 80-foot columns — from placement to height to necessity — hinted at possible issues.
— dcist.com
Previously View full entry
Regardless, there are two paths forward. One is to scrap the project and start over with an open public competition, which would cost around $17 million, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The other is to push forward with the existing plan to finalize the memorial design and begin breaking ground.
We favor the latter. [...] And the current design is nowhere near a “monstrosity,” as some have called it; it is a novel take on memorialization [...].
— washingtonpost.com
Previously View full entry
Situating The Mound of Vendôme, the current exhibition on view at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, requires looking back into Paris' history after the French Revolution. For a tumultuous two months in 1871, the city was under the control of the Commune de Paris, a socialist revolutionary... View full entry
Many New Yorkers, still trying to make sense of the 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center, have had a single question as a museum was being built at ground zero: Too soon?
Now that the 9/11 Memorial Museum, as it's officially called, has opened to the public, they and others may find themselves asking something else: Too much?
The museum is an overstuffed answer to the appealing minimalism of the 9/11 memorial and its cascading pools, which opened in 2011.
— latimes.com
Previously: Sept. 11 Memorial Museum at Ground Zero Prepares for Opening View full entry
After a decade marked by deep grief, partisan rancor, war, financial boondoggles and inundation from Hurricane Sandy, the National September 11 Memorial Museum at ground zero is finally opening ceremonially on Thursday, with President Obama present, and officially to the public next Wednesday. It delivers a gut-punch experience — though if ever a new museum had looked, right along, like a disaster in the making, this one did, beginning with its trifurcated identity. — nytimes.com