Sandy Hook Memorial Competition Newtown  Connecticut  USA

Where do we go to connect with our memories?

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A place that is peaceful, alive and transcendent.

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Semi-finalists in this challenging site design competition, our vision resonated with the Jury: to create a space for remembrance, connection and healing within a nature-park. The healing powers of nature, where nature dominates the senses and brings relief is indisputable. Native plants, interesting bird-life, historic land-forms and waterbodies each share a critical role as primary features of the park and we began by first protecting these areas, enhancing them and then creating access via parking and pathways into and around the land. Within this ecological framework, a cenotaph, a gently curving memorial wall with an intimate gathering terrace, was envisioned as the focal point and destination of the physical Memorial piece. A serpentine stone wall mirrors the surrounding topography and engages space, its live-stone construction expresses both movement and stability and relates to the human body. In acknowledgment of our instinct to do so, inscription stones provide a small relief, upon which to leave a token of remembrance, such as a stone or a leaf or something personally meaningful. Curving pathways echo the form of the memorial wall and offer contemplative, welcoming, and elevating experiences surrounded and enveloped by natural, wild spaces. Seating correspond to the need for rest or the desire for communion with someone - or a thing of beauty - along the way. Local naturalist William Gibson was inspiration for the engraved haiku within the seatwalls.

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w/Kristin Schwab, Ted Efremoff, Matthew Cosma, Lidija Ristovska

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