Washington Common Memorial

Fall 2020
Critic: Gary Hilderbrand  
Harvard Graduate School of Design  

A proposal for a new monument on the National Mall—a living monument to ongoing fights for justice, connecting the existing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. memorial on the Tidal Basin with historic demonstration routes and contemporary sites of protest. The existing memorial to Dr. King is static and hidden, tucked away on the Tidal Basin. The current position places Dr. King in axis with other monuments in the Kite Plan alluding to completed histories. Dr. Kings legacy and the movement he led is not complete, it carries on today. I propose a reorientation of the monument with the National Mall—a dynamic memorial to both the monumental symbol of Dr. King and the past and ongoing demonstrations on the National Mall as civic stage. This reorientation takes the form of an arcing promenade that disrupts the existing Kite Plan.
 

Building on the implied axiality and ellipse circulation of the North-South axis, the proposed promenade marks the intersection of two new ellipses overlayed on the Kite Plan. The first ellipse outlines the invisible force and presence of demonstrations on the mall and the second is centered at the intersection of the existing axes and extends north to include Lafayette Square, another important contemporary site of demonstration. While arcs of sweetgum planted 35' on center mark the new axis and allude to the connection across the Lincoln Reflecting Pool the surface condition registers an expanding plane moving cross-grain to the axis, registering the potential to engage with the entire mall.