Study Sketch of the Memorial Dome

---

The Project

This was an independent submittal to the National World War One Memorial Foundation's Competition for a Memorial in Pershing Park, adjacent to Freedom Plaza and the White House grounds in Washington, DC.  The site plan was designed to address the adjacent buildings and spaces, and to negotiate the convening geometries, while creating a memorial space that alluded to the fields and forests of the European battlefields.  The memorial dome with this curving wings is a symbolic gesture towards Freedom Plaza was meant to create two distinct public spaces.  The Armillary Sphere it houses is a direct reference to the League of Nations and the aspirations for a lasting peace predicated on reason and dialogue.  Designed using a Classical vocabulary that echoes the Edwardian and Roman classicism of its neighbors, the Memorial integrates steel construction as an allusion to the increasing industrialized nature of the war.  At the center of the park, a sunken garden features a sculpture of an Eternal Flame to honor the soldiers we lost.  The statue of General Pershing and the marble tablets were re-used from the existing Pershing Park, and were positioned opposite the Civil War statue below the White House, symbolically turning away from the old isolationist America and traditional warfare, and facing towards the European continent into whose affairs we were stepping into as a new world power.

Competition Board

Dome Study Sketches

Study Sketches