Rising Tides: Reimagining a Monumental Core 

Fall 2020
Critic: Gary Hilderbrand  
Harvard Graduate School of Design

How can design protect the nation’s most significant memorial landscape while reimagining a public realm along a rising Potomac estuary? Current sea level rise and flood protection plans for the National Mall reinforce the Tidal Basin along existing footprints of filled land. Rather than reinforce a hard edge along the Tidal Basin I propose pulling in the coastline to create a protective barrier with high points at 21 feet that mark the implied axes between monuments. The Martin Luther King Jr, FDR and Jefferson memorials are raised to sit on their own islands and civic stages. The elliptical circulation patterns of the north south axis emerge in a new form at the tidal edge, embracing the existing memorials as well as the encroachment of water as an inherent condition of this landscape.