Monuments will accompany pressing citizen demands.
Monuments can travel to continue spreading their messages.
Threatened monuments can be extracted and shared worldwide.
HAVEN is an international repository for commemorative works, to be housed at a global center of memory preservation: The Belvedere and the Washington Mall. Late 19th Century engineers closed off Tiber Creek to solve the city’s sewage issues thus shaping DC’s most enjoyed public spaces: The Mall, the Belvedere and environs. Inspired by this, HAVEN will continue to dig and build the first of many possible repositories to serve as vaults to keep memorials safe, catalogued and available for loan, while leaving The National Mall intact.
The dormant potentials of Monuments allow for contextual evolution via new materials, technology and cultural shifts. Additionally, an increasing number of memorials in the world are becoming vulnerable to terrorism, climate change and fixed messages, which degrade their ability to convey evolving political and cultural opinions for future generations. Our response to this challenge is to create the HAVEN. An institution that serves as a repository whereby monuments and memorials are compiled, guarded and reconnected to the public for expanded interpretation and engagement.
The goal of HAVEN’s four phase process is to allow for a multiplication of a monuments meanings beyond its original narratives.
Phase One: “ID & Extraction” - Monitors memorials and if their impact declines, they are threatened by violence, war, or natural disasters; extract them for Haven’s repository. Once moved from their original sites, valuable public space is opened for expanded and state-of-the art commemorative works which respond to current and future citizen needs.
Phase Two: “Catalogue” – Each extracted monument is meticulously 3D-scanned and added to a digital and physical library. Akin to seed banks, this catalogue safeguards memory against external risks - we will never again fear to lose a Palmyra.
Phase Three: “Community”- The vault serves as into an open-source archive of commemorative works that is accessible via the internet for public viewing. HAVEN’s Steering Committee will review proposals submitted by interested parties – i.e. artists, designers, politicians, activists, entrepreneurs, etc. – who wish to expend or reinterpret monuments’ meanings, context and locations.
Phase Four: “Launch”- Selected participants are given access to physical or virtual memorials based on idea and budget requirements. Participants will be able to place monuments in inaccessible and unimaginable locations, allowing for monuments’ reawakening, sharing, and engagement beyond their original designs.
HAVEN will:
Allow protest to stand with historical statues in the fight for social justice.
Allow a nations’ memories to be exhibited in natural landscapes
Ensure monuments are rescued from peril and then shared with the global community.
Allow protest to stand with historical statues in the fight for social justice.
Allow a nations’ memories to be exhibited in natural landscapes
Ensure monuments are rescued from peril and then shared with the global community.
Current and future technologies are transforming how contemporary culture creates, remembers and forgets. HAVEN is a framework that spotlights these changes, opening the path to ideas such as impermanence, intangibility, and the irrestorable – notions that belong in planning and design strategies for the memorials of the future.
