Located within the rich and historical fabric of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., this project
proposes the addition of a new monument on the mall. This project tasks one to navigate between
the intricacies of private and public forums of funerary architecture, tombs, and memorials, in a
highly politicized setting.
In this proposal, the memorial is conceptualized in the memory of George Floyd, who was killed
by Minneapolis police on the 25th of May of 2020, sparking nation-wide protests within the days
following, and reigniting the BLM movement in the middle of a pandemic.
This memorial, bearing the weight of all of the oppression and injustices that culminated in
Floyd’s death, takes a pure volumetric form that is reminiscent of the surrounding memorials
on the National Mall, and collapses the internal structure, scarring and deconstructing the very
ideals of a perfect past that the surrounding institutions impose. The result is a turbulent and
obstructive internal world, that the visitor must circumnavigate in order to complete their voyage
through this escape from the Mall.
It takes occupants into a walled-in collective amphitheater, a stage similar to the steps of the
Lincoln Memorial, then through an archive of all the documented victims of police brutality,
which leads them directly beneath the tomb for George Floyd itself. This monument takes the
visitor through and into its broken ground and framework, beneath the suspended tomb of
George Floyd, then up into an idealized contemplative garden - a mirrored room in the sky void
of context and a resting point from the turmoil of the history that lies in the journey back down.
