Montevideo, Uruguay
“Architecture is a powerful tool to transform the world,” states Martín Gómez Platero.
“It is, above all, a collective and historical reality, made of small fragments which survive over time and become culture.”
“By creating a memorial capable of activating senses and memories in this way, we can remind our visitors—as the pandemic has—that we as human beings are subordinate to nature and not the other way around.”
Designed by Martín Gómez Platero, the proposed World Memorial to the Pandemic is intended to offer visitors a sensorial experience and a safe place to reflect and remember victims of Covid-19.
If built, it will be the first large-scale memorial to do so, according to the studio.
The Memorial recently won a 2021 International Architecture Award from The European Center for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies and The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design.
Inspired by the present, but conceived of as a contribution to the future, the World Memorial to the Pandemic is a project that gives rise to public space without an impact on the environment or costs to the State.
It is a public space oriented to the reflection that, although it stems from the experience of this pandemic, is not limited to it or to the way in which the planet is facing it.
Instead, the memorial aims to continue building a collective consciousness that reminds us that mankind is not the center of the ecosystem in which we live since we will always be subordinate to nature.
Platero sites the Memorial on water off the coast of Uruguay.
A long pedestrian walkway will extend from the waterfront to the main ring-shaped platform, which will measure 40 meters in diameter.
At the center of the sculpture, there will be a 10-meter-wide hole where rocks and water underneath will poke through.
The space offers a refuge from the noise and sights of urban life and will allow visitors to be surrounded by nature.
Up to 300 people can congregate on the platform at a time while still maintaining a safe social distance from one another.
The concave surface would be constructed using concrete, while its underside will be faced with Corten steel, a durable material that requires little maintenance as it will naturally weather over time as the terrain and water level around the sculpture change.
The construction method provides for the structure to be prefabricated, with the components assembled on site, which avoids the impact of heavy construction work in the area, and this, in turn, allows the work to be reversible easily, quickly, and without any impact.
The proposal also involves the mitigation of exogenous elements that are present at the site and that do not currently favor the landscape.
In a few years, this pandemic will be one more chapter in history, but it makes us reflect on how we dialogue with nature and on what is our place in the world. From this idea, the architects started to design this project as a contribution, “we are doing it because we want to contribute to turning this adversity into a learning experience.”
If this idea also brings about a new public space that has no negative impacts and does not imply any cost for the State, since it is financed by private contributions, it seems to us to be a possible dream.
On that basis, the studio proposed that this initiative be evaluated by the different public institutions involved.
The architects came up with the project and as architects, they enjoy the process and love to see the ideas materialize.
But now the matter is in the hands of the institutions and it will be them, in their own time and based on their points of view, who will determine whether this memorial is built in Uruguay.
Project: World Memorial to the Pandemic
Architects: Gómez Platero
Client: Gómez Platero