Archinect - News

A decade after the tragedy, SWA Group unveils memorial to Sandy Hook victims as a center of reflection

2022-11-14T15:23:00-05:00

Ten years removed from the tragic shooting that claimed the lives of 27 school children and teachers in Newtown, Connecticut, SWA Group has today officially unveiled a permanent memorial to the victims, called The Clearing, that will seek to heal the community, survivors, and family members still in search of justice in their tight-knit New England town.

Located on a five-acre parcel of donated land near the replacement for the now demolished former elementary school, the design for the memorial keys on three elements integrated into interconnected paths that bring visitors through a circuitry of woodlands, meadows, and a water feature intended to “honor the process of grieving and remembrance.”

Photo: Neil Landino

SWA says: “The Sandy Hook Memorial differs from other memorials in that it was publicly funded and completely community-led. It is also primarily landscape rather than a monument. Memorials are typically embedded in landscape rather than having landscape as the focus. The ...

Thomas Heatherwick reported to be consulting on a UK Covid memorial

2021-07-27T15:31:00-04:00

The Times is reporting that Thomas Heatherwick has met with members of the British government as recently as March in what could be discussions surrounding a future memorial to COVID-19 victims in the UK.

Heatherwick has done a number of high-profile commissions in London, the city of his birth, over the past decade. Cabinet Office Minister Chloe Smith took a meeting with the 51-year-old architect although nothing further has been confirmed in terms of his involvement.

Related: Thomas Heatherwick on Archinect Sessions podcast, "Problem-solving with Thomas Heatherwick"

A commission for a memorial has been announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson in a May address to parliament. The memorial will be established at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. An online fundraiser has already garnered more than £2.3 in donations from across the commonwealth.

Johnson told the House of Commons it was a “solemn duty” to construct a national memorial.

There is a fraught history recently between Heath...

New York City is moving its planned COVID memorial from Battery Park after protests

2021-07-09T16:55:00-04:00

Ten days after Gov. Andrew Cuomo revealed plans to build a new monument in Lower Manhattan honoring New York's essential workers who served on the frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic, the state is now working out a new plan after protesters detoured construction in Battery Park City.

The state had already broken ground on the project late in June before backing out this week thanks to an incredible amount of public backlash against it. The governor’s plan for the monument was so fast-moving that it had initially been slated to open on Labor Day before this week’s pause.

A petition drive had garnered over 8,000 votes online before the announcement. There will be a committee meeting to discuss a potential new location on Wednesday. Gothamist has more on the protest and relocation effort here.

Fallen Journalists Memorial: AECOM and Paul Goldberger will help materialize a new site of remembrance to commemorate journalists who made the ultimate sacrifice

2021-07-01T08:00:00-04:00

On June 24th, the Fallen Journalists Memorial (FJM) Foundation announced its partnership with global engineering and infrastructure firm AECOM, Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger, and the Levinson Group on a new site that pays homage to journalists worldwide. The FJM Foundation commits to memorializing and amplifying the work of these individuals whose lives were lost while in service to pursue the truth.

The memorial is "the culmination of dedicated work by the Fallen Journalists Memorial Foundation to honor the reporters, photojournalists, producers, editors, and others in the field, who have died while performing their jobs as journalists," shared Claire Sale, AECOM's project manager overseeing the memorial project. "We are honored to have a role in bringing this memorial to life."

The initiative stemmed from the Fallen Journalists Memorial Act that Congress passed in December 2020. The bill authorized the planning and development of "a commemorative work...

Newtown, CT approves SWA's plans for a Sandy Hook Memorial ahead of the tragedy’s tenth anniversary

2021-06-17T12:10:00-04:00

A new memorial to victims of the Sandy Hook shooting has been approved following a referendum vote in Connecticut that finalized the project after nearly three years of cost-related delays.

View of fountain. Image courtesy SWA Group.

The memorial is adjacent to the new Sandy Hook Elementary campus and will open on the tenth anniversary of the shooting in December of next year.

Aerial view. Image courtesy SWA Group.

SWA’s 2018 design for The Clearing will invite visitors into the 5-acre donated space via a network of paths surrounded by meadows and centered by a sycamore tree at the base of a water feature set upon a granite base. The garden plan was approved unanimously by a memorial committee after a competition yielded 189 different entries for what will eventually be dedicated as Connecticut’s second gun-violence related memorial in as many years.

Site plan. Image courtesy SWA Group.

The state legislature also voted this month to approve a bond package that would contribute $2.6 mi...

Adjaye Associates unveils design for Le Mémorial des Martyrs in remembrance of Niger's fallen soldiers

2020-10-19T11:48:00-04:00

Adjaye Associates has released a design for The Martyrs Memorial, a monument commemorating those who lost their lives in the fight against terrorism along Niger's southern and western borders.

Located at the heart of Niamey, Niger, the memorial brings a new urban plaza and multi-use civic gathering space to the region. The memorial sits on a raised triangular base, creating a sense of separation and sanctuary.

Upon arrival, visitors will be immersed in a grid of 20-meter-high pillars, situated at the back end of the triangular plot. A secondary grid of trees anchor the two rear ends of the site. Each one of the concrete pillars symbolize lost individuals. At night, an array of light projects from the pillars. further emphasizing the monument's status as the civic heart of Niamey.

At ground level, the civic space will provide a multi-use environment that also functions as a cooling cavity, providing air to the main space with each column acting as a thermal chimney to release heat bu...

After brief uncertainty, 9/11 memorial display to go ahead as usual

2020-08-17T15:56:00-04:00

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum’s Tribute in Light will shine this year after all, officials said on Saturday. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said the state would provide the health personnel and supervision so that the display, which has memorialized the attacks on the Twin Towers since 2002, could safely continue.

The Museum had previously canceled this year's display due to coronavirus concerns for the workers paid to install the 88 light bulbs that make up the installation. After New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and other stepped into insure safety for these workers, however, memorial officials changed course and will produce the familiar twin towered memorial light display for this year's 9/11 anniversary.

Sandy Hook memorial design by SWA Group takes a step forward

2019-12-30T20:13:00-05:00

“The themes of nature, rebirth and regrowth made it perfect for a landscape memorial,” said Affleck. They aimed to incorporate plants and materials that fit seamlessly into Connecticut’s natural environment, like the sycamore tree. The designers also spent time discussing grief with people in their own lives who have experienced it. They came to the conclusion that everyone heals differently.

A proposal created by Ben Waldo and Dan Affleck of SWA Group in San Francisco has been selected as the winning design for the Sandy Hook memorial in Connecticut. The memorial design features a circular reflecting pool at the center surrounded by peaceful gardens and meandering pathways that will allow visitors to "engage with the site in a way that is unique to them,” Waldo says in the Hartford Courant. If Newtown residents vote to fund the memorial, construction will start in December 2020. Plans call for the memorial to open to the public on December 14, 2021.

Waldo and Affleck's design was “universally loved” by the victims’ families, the memorial commission chair Daniel Krauss told the Courant.

A decade in the making, UVA’s Memorial to Enslaved Laborers begins to take shape

2019-10-19T16:10:00-04:00

“The memorial is a circle, a continuous ring never ending, an opening for people to step inside and contemplate, to learn what slavery was about. For the community, I hope it enlightens young and old, and reminds everyone that slavery was a very evil part of our history.”

Members of the University of Virginia share their personal experiences and connections to the currently-under-construction Memorial to Enslaved Laborers that is taking shape on the campus.

The university’s Board of Visitors has chosen an interdisciplinary team to bring the project to life that includes Höweler+Yoon, UVA alumna Mabel O. Wilson; Frank Dukes, past director of the Institute for Environmental Negotiation in the UVA School of Architecture; Gregg Bleam, a UVA-based landscape architect; and the artist Eto Otitigbe.

David Adjaye designs memorial pavilion honoring iconic South African trumpeter Hugh Ramapolo Masekela

2019-06-14T20:29:00-04:00

The family of the revered South African trumpeter and cultural activist Hugh Ramapolo Masekela recently unveiled a memorial pavilion honoring the musician that architect David Adjaye designed. Masekela passed away last January at the age of 78.

The late Hugh Ramapolo Masekela. Photo: Brett Rubin.

Spearheaded by Masekela's family, the pavilion honors the Pan-African heritage and values that the iconic musician championed throughout his life. It also commemorates his contributions to South Africa's liberation and commitment to realizing a post-colonial Africa that impacted the shared history and memory of people in the African diaspora. The pavilion was revealed at the beginning of South Africa's Youth Month and as part of Masekela's 80th Birthday Commemoration.

Photo: Alexi Portokallis.

Adjaye's elegant design for the pavilion draws from African burial ritual practices, in which dignified structures are built to serve as a gathering place for family and visitors to remember and connec...

The Alabama memorial dedicated to African-American lynchings

2018-04-09T20:52:00-04:00

Uneven, rusted steel is meant to echo the many shades and skin tones of those African-Americans lynched.

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which Oprah Winfrey
visited, opens to the public on April 26, 2018. She talked with criminal
defense attorney Bryan Stevenson, founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, which is behind the project.

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice

Salon revisits how Maya Lin won Vietnam War Memorial competition by breaking its biggest rule

2017-10-02T14:12:00-04:00

The most important rule was that entries be non-political. They were to express no opinion whatsoever about the rightness or wrongness of the Vietnam War itself.

As the article points out, May Lin's design of a series of slabs were conceived by Lin as dominos falling—a reference to the "domino theory," prominent from the 50s to the 80s, that posited that if one country in a region came under the influence of communism, then the surrounding countries would follow in a domino effect. With the names of those dead from the war etched on, the memorial's foundation "was a brilliantly devastating political commentary on the Vietnam War: that the 'kids' of Vietnam took a dizzying ride on a series of falling dominos to their collective death."

Montgomery, Alabama plans a memorial to the 4,000+ victims of lynchings throughout the U.S.

2017-08-21T18:08:00-04:00

Slated to open in 2018, the Memorial to Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama will seek to tell the truth. Six acres of land owned by the Equal Justice Initiative—the legal services nonprofit Stevenson founded in 1989—will memorialize the more than 4,000 victims of what Stevenson calls racial terror lynching in the American South between 1877 and 1950. A nearby museum will tell the history of slavery, lynching, segregation, and mass incarceration as a single narrative.

Designed by MASS Design Group—which has previously worked on the Kigali Genocide Memorial—the memorial stems from a comprehensive report on lynchings released in 2015 by the Equal Justice Initiative. The memorial will feature six-foot columns, each representing counties where lynchings took place. For each column, a duplicate will be placed in the surrounding courtyard and eventually relocated to their respective counties as they directly confront their part in this history.

Shortlisted concepts for UK Holocaust Memorial revealed

2017-01-27T18:39:00-05:00

On the somber occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the 10 shortlisted proposals for the UK Holocaust Memorial Design Competition have been publicly revealed. The proposals were designed by the 10 star-studded teams who were invited to submit concepts this past fall.

Here are the 10 shortlisted concepts for the Memorial and the Learning Centre.

↓ Adjaye Associates and Ron Arad Architects
With Gustafson Porter + Bowman, Plan A and DHA Designs

↓ Allied Works
With Robert Montgomery, The Olin Studio, Ralph Appelbaum Associates, Allied Info Works, Arup, Curl la Tourelle Head Architecture, PFB Construction Management Services Ltd, BuroHappold and Nathaniel Lichfield & Partners

↓ Anish Kapoor and Zaha Hadid Architects
With Sophie Walker Studio, Arup Lighting, Event London, Lord Cultural Resources, Max Fordham, Michael Hadi Associates, Gardiner & Theobald, Whybrow, Access=Design and Goddard Consulting

↓ Caruso St John Architects, Marcus Taylor and Rachel Whiteread
With Vogt Landscape Architects, Arup Lighting and David Bonnett Associates

↓ Diamond Schmitt Architects
With Ralph Appelbaum Associates, Martha Schwartz Partners and Arup

↓ Foster + Partners and Michal Rovner
With Simon Schama, Avner Shalev, Local Projects, Samantha Heywood, David Bonnett Asso...

From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration

2016-08-18T02:09:00-04:00

Last year, the group released a report documenting more than 4,000 lynchings between 1877 and 1950. After that report, Mr. Stevenson launched a project to collect soil from unmarked lynching sites around the country. The soil will be placed in glass jars that will be on display at the museum.

Campbell Robertson highlights plans by the Equal Justice Initiative, to build a national memorial to victims of lynching and open a museum that explores African American history from enslavement to mass incarceration.

h/t @Rob Holmes