Memorial Park Competition
A Neightborhood and a Memorial Park
The site of our finalist entry for a memorial park dedicated to the victims of the 2009 Metro crash is one of a series of wooded parcels within a 24 mile parkway proposed by the McMillan Commission in 1901. While that effort languished long ago due to lack of funding, we suggested that our proposal be seen as potentailly one of a series of future sites that could form a great urban necklace of monuments and public parks, a way to convert a ghost of the McMillan Plan into a new Master Plan of public space deployments.
Working with DC artist Barbara Liotta, our proposal responds to two audiences, the families of the victims, by the installation of individual stone sculptures, and the neighborhood, by transforming an abandoned strip of woods along the tracks to a park.
As a first gesture, the park is oriented toward an adjacent church as a means to encourage the neighborhood in general, and the church membership in particular, to take stewardship of the park as its own.
This is what makes public space successful.