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February 7, 2005
ASLA Member Selected as Finalist for National
AIDS Memorial
Winner to be announced April 1.
When most college students complete their studies,
the path is fairly predictable: Draw up your résumé
and hit the street looking for employment in your chosen field.
Few graduates can even fathom creating a project that could result
in a memorial to the most significant health crisis of our time.
Yet that is exactly where Melissa Cate Christ, Associate ASLA, now
finds herself after graduating from the University of Toronto last
spring.
In January, Christ was selected as one of five finalists
for the National AIDS Memorial Design Competition, which will choose
a design for a new memorial in the
National AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate
Park.
A living memorial
Christ’s design envisions a 20-foot-high pile of small, smooth
stones that visitors could use to create their own personal memorials.
The idea is that the memorial would be a shifting structure that
might eventually disappear. It would be a memorial that involves
visitors on a personal level, while at the same time representing
the scope and magnitude of the AIDS crisis. “The idea is that
this is a living memorial,” Christ says. “AIDS is still
ongoing; it’s not an event that is now in the past …
and this presents an opportunity to do something different that
involves people in the memorial.”
Christ also notes that the memorial functions as
a metaphor for AIDS, showing the disease as a personal illness while
demonstrating its global magnitude and the hope that someday it
will be eradicated. The transient nature of the design means that
its 20-foot pile of stones will eventually disappear, revealing
a circle where the pile once stood—its rocks dispersed throughout
the park in smaller memorials.
Personal inspiration
Christ had visited the AIDS Memorial Grove prior to learning of
the design competition and was struck by the solemnity and beauty
of the grove. She had also researched the AIDS epidemic for a professor,
a process that gave her an understanding of the scope of the disease.
When she learned of the AIDS Memorial Competition, these two experiences
inspired her to take a break from the agency work she was doing
and devote herself to the memorial design.
After mulling over the memorial for several months,
Christ began working on designs toward the end of December. Her
design coalesced around stones, which she collects, when she began
contemplating the concepts of touchstones and worry stones.
“I tend to collect rocks,” she says,
“and I have some that are really smooth stones. These are
very soothing to touch—something you like to grasp.”
Christ also likens the stones to rosary beads and
says they are meant to invoke a sense of physical contact while
at the same time representing the scale of the AIDS epidemic—combining
the idea of individual contact and the large scope of the AIDS crisis.
As far as her actual submission was concerned, Christ
says the competition organizers were very specific in their requirements,
asking for two 30- by 40-inch boards that showed a portrait of the
memorial when placed side-by-side. She mostly did collages for the
boards, working a bit in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. She adds
that these types of competitions can be liberating because they
generally are “more about the idea” than the technical
aspects of the design.
The next step
The AIDS Memorial Competition is a one-stage competition, so Christ
will not have to submit any further materials. Rather, she will
travel to San Francisco for an interview with representatives from
the National AIDS Memorial about her design. The winner will be
announced on April 1, and if Christ is chosen, she plans to move
to San Francisco to work on the memorial and find a job with a local
firm. There is a $2 million budget for the project, which will need
to be met through fundraising. Therefore, construction of the winning
design won’t begin immediately. One of the benefits of her
design, Christ notes, is that it would likely cost less than the
project’s budget.
In the meantime, Christ is working on other
projects. She is presenting a design to the city of Toronto that
reimagines a right-of-way above the Toronto subway, creating additional
parkland where there is now a parking lot. She is also working on
some residential designs with former classmates. Clearly, even if
Christ is not chosen for the AIDS Memorial, her future as a landscape
architect is nothing but bright.
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