Berlin’s Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church Competition

 

A Church Ruin as Reconciliation Memorial

 

View of winning design from south ©Heninghan Peng Architects

 

 

For those tourists visiting Berlin today, the sudden approach to the ruins of a 1895 church building located on the city’s downtown Breitscheidplatz would certainly arouse their curiosity. One of the few remaining

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A Tribute to Veterans on the Wisconsin Prairie

 

The Cold War Veterans Memorial Competition

 

Rendering: Oyler Wu Collaborative/Courtesy Pritzker Military Museum & Library

 

The Pritzker family is no stranger to good architecture; so it should come as no surprise that a project launched by the Pritzker Military Archives, including a competition for a Cold War Veterans Memorial in Wisconsin,

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The Budludzha Monument Project

 

Pedestrian perspective

 

The result of an effort from a professor at the TUM (Technische Universität München) to restore the Budludzha Monument in Bulgaria, located in a remote location on a mountain top in that country, we discovered that it originally was the result of a 1959 design competition won by the young

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San Jose’s Search for an Urban Icon

 

The Urban Confluence Silicon Valley Competition

 

Image ©SMAR Architecture

 

After several stops and starts, a decision to name the winner of the Urban Confluence Design Competition appears to be nearing its conclusion. In 2017, three founders of a local non-profit established The San Jose Light Tower Corporation (SJLTC). The founders

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The Eisenhower Memorial: Sending Mixed Messages?

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The Eisenhower Memorial: Sending Mixed Messages? by Stanley Collyer

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Preface

Since this article was written, several events have occurred which have changed our perception of the final design process. Frank Gehry went back to the drawing board and has modified his memorial design, eliminating some of the columns which we objected to at the edge of the site (January 2011, see above). One may only hope that the tapastry design element, which the Arts Commission still has some reservations about, can be resolved successfully.

More recently, a group called the National Civic Art Society in Washington has issued a call for another Eisenhower Memorial competition for the same site. Apparently stuck on the idea that everything in Washington near the Mall should be in the Beaux Arts traditional style, they take offense that the Gehry design does not meet their standards of what a memorial to Ike should look like. Although probably well-meaning, this group evidently would like to turn back the clock on progress in this field. They would like to erase from memory all the advancements in new materials and ideas which have surfaced and been implemented over the past century. Is it then surprising that not one architect on their board is a national name (Most of their members are laypersons). Although their competition will undoubtedly draw some entries, it should hardly be taken seriously, much less receive any attention from the press. What they are doing is adding nothing to a positive dialogue about architecture in this country—only attempting to set it back by decades. -Ed

Frank Gehry’s preferred idea for the Eisenhower Memorial was one of three proposals which the firm presented in March 2010 to the Eisenhower Memorial Commission after prevailing in the earlier selection process. Although not touted as a pure competition by the Memorial Commission, the original selection process in 2009 was typical of the General Services Administration’s Excellence in Architecture program, often used to adjudicate the design process for government projects such as federal courthouses.

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A Tribute to Eisenhower

Night view of the memorial tapestry from Independence Avenue, with Gehry’s sketch of the Normandy cliffs.

 

Explaining the contributions of a World War II hero and later President of the United States on a very modest site on Independence Avenue just off the Washington Mall is tantamount to asking an author to describe

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A Quest to Memorialize a Serious Hate Crime: The Pulse Memorial Competition

Winning entry by Coldefy & Associés (image © Coldefy & Associés)

 

In these times when political emotions run high and gun violence is the norm, not the exception; and when emotions no longer are held in check, but encouraged by our leaders, minorities become easy targets for those who adhere to ideologies based

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Babyn Yar Ukrainian Memorial Competition


1st Prize Entry by querkraft architekten (Image © querkraft architekten)

 

 

Memorials to commemorate atrocities committed by the Nazis during World War II have taken many forms. Holocaust museums such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. by Pei Cobb Freed or the Jewish Museum in Berlin by Daniel Libeskind, all endeavor to paint a broad picture, including narratives covering most of the major events and sites. Former concentration camps such as Auschwitz, Dachau, Theresienstadt and Buchenwald have been frequent tour destinations. In the case of Buchenwald, the local city of Weimar has placed pictures of “Witnesses” throughout the downtown area as a reminder of the Nazi legacy.

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Sandy Hook Memorial

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Architecture as Political Statement in the Ukraine

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