A MEMORIAL AND CONTEMPLATIVE GARDEN
constructing spaces of protest after George Floyd
Located within the historical fabric of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., this project proposes the addition of a new monument, a memorial conceptualized in the memory of George Floyd, that must navigate between the intricacies of private and public forums of funerary architecture, in a highly politicized setting. This memorial, bearing the weight of all of the injustices that culminated in Floyd's death, takes a pure volumetric form that is reminiscent of the surrounding memorials, and collapses the internal structure, scarring and deconstructing the very ideals that the surrounding institutions impose. The result is a turbulent and obstructive internal world. It takes occupants into a walled-in collective amphitheater, a stage similar to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, then through an archive of all the documented victims of police brutality, which leads them directly beneath the tomb for George Floyd itself. This monument takes the visitor beneath the suspended tomb of George Floyd, then up into an idealized contemplative garden - a mirrored room in the sky void of context and a resting point from the turmoil of the history that lies in the journey back down.
