Empty Pedestals
Honor Award
Communications
Multiple cities across the American Southeast, Multiple states across the American Southeast, United States
Kofi Boone FASLA
M. Elen Deming, FASLA
Client: LSU Press
“Empty Pedestals” tackles a complex and timely issue with sensitivity and intellectual rigor. By addressing the fate of Confederate monuments, it opens a critical dialogue on social equity, diversity, and historical accountability. The project stands out for its nuanced approach and its potential to inspire inclusive public discourse and reimagine civic space.
- 2025 Awards Jury
Project Credits
M. Elen Deming, Co-editor
Walter Hood, Contributor
Tania Allen, Contributor
Sara Queen, Contributor
Blair L M Kelly, Contributor
W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Contributor
Dell Upton, Contributor
Dayton Schroeter, Contributor
Sue Mobley, Contributor
Bryan C Lee Jr., Contributor
CL Bohannon, Contributor
Elgin Cleckley, Contributor
David Wilson, Contributor
Zena Howard, Contributor
Chantel Rush Tebbe, Contributor
Richard Schein, Contributor
Mitch Landrieu, Contributor
LSU Press, Publisher
Project Statement
Landscape narratives can harm. Landscape narratives can heal. In Empty Pedestals: Countering Confederate Narratives Through Public Design (LSU Press, 2024), editors Kofi Boone and M. Elen Deming bring together 14 contributors who present design, planning, and other strategies aimed at building community resilience by confronting and transforming spaces marked by endemic prejudice. The book focuses on the legacies and futures of Confederate monuments and the spaces they inhabit. The book offers a groundbreaking compilation of historical context, spatial analysis, compelling regional case studies, and recommendations for design action to promote social equity, diversity, and inclusion.
Project Narrative
Empty Pedestals uses a design perspective to explore how Confederate monuments reflect regionalism, racist political agendas, and collective pain. Boone and Deming, along with the volume’s 14 contributors, strive to elevate novel frameworks and shared solutions for the issues troubling American cultural landscapes. Empty Pedestals amplifies the voices of those who have confronted hateful narratives and devised strategies that stand apart from old mythologies. If and when oppressive symbols such as Confederate monuments are permanently eliminated, design alternatives presented here may offer healing in shared spaces, healthier social discourse, and stronger community resilience. Walter Hood’s foreword challenges designers to lean into conflict, discomfort, and the critical learning processes those situations afford. The volume is organized into three parts with visual essays interspersed. Tania Allen and Sara Queen provide four innovative visual essays (plates) exploring specific data-driven aspects of Confederate monumentation. Part I: Context, Experience, Perspective offers four accounts of how Confederate monuments and their public spaces have impacted communities from the Reconstruction Era through the Civil Rights movements to the present. The essays foreground the experience of Confederate monuments seen through critical histories and non-White perspectives, some based on deeply affective personal experiences. Part II: Narrative, Strategy, Design is the heart of the volume, featuring local interventions and public narratives led mainly by Black artists and designers. Adopting a case study approach, these essays are richly illustrated with contemporary designs, public art installations, maps, renderings, and other visualizations. Eight case studies are arranged along a spectrum of design strategies. Part III: Action, Reflection, Healing features essays drawing out transferable tactics, principles, and frameworks from previous perspectives and designs. This section considers broader systems within which local public spaces perform, including grassroots cultural, economic, and political entities charged with preserving and effecting changes in the built environment. These reflections provide orientation, impetus, and direction for designers, planners, funders, and others working towards a more inclusive and vibrant local public landscape. Elen Deming concludes Part III with “Stories We Tell: Toward Healing History(s),” distilling overarching ideas into a framework for action by designers, bringing the book full circle to emphasize the power of narratives in shaping social and spatial systems. With the permission of former Mayor Mitch Landrieu, the volume concludes with an appendix featuring the full text of his nationally significant speech explaining why he decided to take down monuments in New Orleans. The completion of Empty Pedestals included a Graham Foundation grant recognizing the book’s value to critical discourse and contributions to equitable spaces. Since its release, Empty Pedestals has received the Louisiana ASLA Chapter Award, been featured by the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH), and been the subject of many presentations, including a convening hosted by the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture.