Restoring Light Memorial

Project Details

Project Description

FROM THE ARCHITECTS:

Southeast Design Fellowship – An Opportunity for Healing

Facilitated by: Claudia Cintas, Zachary Greco, and Stephen Szutenbach.

Spontaneous memorials that arise in the aftermath of tragedies provide a community with an outlet to express its grief as well as its unified resolve. Because these makeshift memorials usually deteriorate, however, more lasting expressions are necessary to help heal wounds that can take years of recovery. That’s the challenge the Orlando, Fla. community faced in 2016.

In the summer of that year, a gunman killed 49 people and wounded 53 others at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub making it the deadliest mass shooting in United States history at that time. Pulse opened in 2004 and became a refuge for Orlando’s LGBT and Hispanic communities. Some members of the HKS Orlando office have personal ties to the club and in some cases to victims of the attack. As the healing process moved forward, staffers began searching for ways they could aid the recovery process. Our Orlando staff found a way to contribute through the HKS design fellowship program.

The inaugural HKS Southeast Design Fellowship (SEDF) was hosted in the HKS Orlando Office in March 2018, becoming HKS’ third regional charrette. HKS design fellowships serve as incubators for young designers with a fire for solving complicated challenges in their communities. With the OnePulse Foundation members acting as critics and jurors, the SEDF challenged participants to create a permanent monument to the victims of the terror attack at Pulse.

To celebrate the lives lost and the legacy of Pulse, the fellows attempted to design a tribute worthy of the victims and their families, the community at large and the OnePulse Foundation. The SEDF divided into four teams and asked them to look beyond standard conventions, property and precedent to create a memorial that will help the community heal from – but always remember -- the heinous assault. Below are descriptions of each team’s design and the guiding principles behind them.


Restoring Light – Winner of AIA Florida’s Honor Award for Theoretical or Research Design

Designed by: Daniella Covate, Mattheus da Silveira, Vanessa Marin and Nathan Wallace

How do we make a place that not only commemorates the lives lost but brings solace and understanding to the survivors and the loved ones left behind? And how do we celebrate the community and the city that came together in its darkest hour? We began our design by asking these questions and recognizing the site as a sacred relic worth preserving. We designed a reliquary to sit delicately above the existing nightclub, but it pushes down into the space and brings light into the darkness, a symbol of love conquering hate.