Comments on: 7 July Memorial by Carmody Groarke

By: Ivor Hall

Ivor Hall — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 10:51:40 +0000

An extraordinarily ordinary design by committee. With a final total design/consultants fees of £300+K one might expect a more imaginative outcome.

I see no evidence of an area for the families of those who died to sit quietly and contemplate, but can see noisy children using the labyrinth of columns as a play area.

The organisers, the Royal Parks, do not seem to have learnt from their earlier disaster, the Diana Memorial Fountain, and I see health and safety problems arising which will require security/first aid attendants to be present at all times.

By: Joaquin

Joaquin — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 09:05:21 +0000

@edward:

Agreed. Where’s the Patina of age?

By: Jay D

Jay D — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 00:14:02 +0000

It would seem that there’s already a similar memorial in Hyde Park…The New Zealand War Memorial!

http://www.mch.govt.nz/projects/memorials/london-media-gallery.html

By: sonic

sonic — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:51:59 +0000

it could be seen banal. but it is ridiculous to regard one architecture as the one reinterpreting the others’ architecture. this work is convincing in term of simple and solid attitude as an memorial

By: monsieur!

monsieur! — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 08:04:33 +0000

wheres the roof?

…silly architects

By: Haarblicher

Haarblicher — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 10:56:59 +0000

Leaves me cold.

By: ALISON

ALISON — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 08:42:03 +0000

For me, powerful memorials not only deal with the memory of the victims, but also provide forgiveness and understanding of the perpetrators. I am afraid 56 people died that day, not 52. There are also many people still injured from the event. It is for me, silly to have one object for each person, as its always more complex than that.

Design wise, it leaves me cold, what an unforgiving material and over 50 seperate pilliars! If it was not in Hyde Park surrounded by green I don’t think it would work at all.

By: nils

nils — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 06:30:55 +0000

a memorial is definitely in order, but this seems like a weak reinterpretation of peter eisenman’s holocaust memorial in berlin.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 04:23:26 +0000

Trying for pathos, but regrettably achieving bathos - one would expect more from them considering the help of Antony Gormley.

It is not that the design is merely poor and unoriginal, it is that it is what one expects, it’s the first idea in one’s head and thus fails on the first order. I have nothing against stelae, they can be used with great effect - as in the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, where a heaving landscape rises and falls, a person experiences the weight of the deaths, the tragedy and the loss - here these thin, reflective poles are nothing more than signifiers of what one thinks a memorial should look like. A rote recitation. And appear to be a clustering of slick signage from an airport. In the end not honoring the people who died needlessly, but relegating their deaths to a small and inconsequential area of Hyde Park, speaking more about the culture of the Iraq war and the great shame a country must have to produce this for a memorial. In that it succeeds, showing us shame at a cost to the families and all Londoners.

I was in there. The city was quite. The city died that day. Not just those 52 people. We all were still. Afraid. Touching out to all our friends. Walking the streets whispering to each other. This memorial should not be solely about those families. It should represent a loss for us all as a people.

Carmody Groarke might have done better recycling their elevated walkway, which had the sense that one was walking through an archeological dig viewing the world from afar in a thoughtful distancing of oneself, to greater effect.

By: edward

edward — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 19:08:33 +0000

Excellent design, but stainless? I would have liked some material that weathered over time.