Memorial Washington DC

A walk of contemplation 

War; deemed so unavoidable by humanity that conventions were held to determine how to kill ethically. This speaks to the unfillable mental and physical void left by war. One which we attempt to remediate with intellectual crises. After World War One the U.S. populus underwent an almost neo-enlightenment. Ideas arose that people should have a fundamental understanding of how others should be treated. This monument attempts to formalize this enlightenment and act as a living memorial to the soldiers that died one hundred years ago. 

The monument is most active at the urban scale, materializing and extrapolating the axis that connects the seat of economic power, the U.S. Treasury, the seat of political power, the U.S. Capital, and creating a new visual axis with the Washington Monument, the monument re-structures the contemporary urban setting. 

The form works representationally as a metaphor for the outcomes of war: sacrifice, justice, peace, egality, existentialism, and enlightenment, and refers to these societal principles temporally from past to present and on to the future. The void left by war takes the form of a trench representing the past and the 50,402 U.S. soldiers killed in battle. The axis begins to lift from the ground and reach for the the top of the D.C. fabric as a «stairway to heaven» representing the future and its eventual outcomes. Our greatest hope is that this simple poetic action that has given form to the abstract notion of axis will be a place to envision the future, embrace what’s next societal advancement, and contemplate on the past, all via the creation of memory as place in the public urban setting of Pershing Park. 

credits

Architects: Clément Blanchet Architecture
Client: NC
Nature of the operation: Competition
Realised in: 2015
Site: Washington, USA
Program: Memorial
Budget: NC