Public Memory and Memorials
Creating spaces that pursue justice and inspire collective action
Societies worldwide have struggled to confront and address histories of violence, oppression, and injustice. Public spaces and memorials have often excluded narratives, erasing stories that deserve recognition and perpetuating systems of inequality. Communities cannot heal, reconcile, or advance toward a more just and equitable future without spaces for collective remembrance and reckoning.
The Gun Violence Memorial Project
Rosa Caban
National Memorial for Peace and Justice
Iwan Baan
Writing on the Wall Exhibition
Chalom + Blaylock Photography
The Gun Violence Memorial Project
We are reimagining spaces of public memory as tools for justice, reconciliation, and collective healing.
By designing memorials, monuments, and public spaces that honor untold stories and histories, we can create opportunities for learning, dialogue, action, and joy. This lab demonstrates how design can make justice visible, fostering belonging and inspiring communities to take ownership of their collective future.
We partner with communities to design and implement innovative memorials, cultural landscapes, and sites of remembrance.
By co-creating these spaces with impacted communities, we ensure that public memory initiatives reflect the lived experiences and aspirations of those most affected.
Case Study: The National Memorial for Peace and Justice
Alan Ricks
The United States has done very little to recognize the lasting societal trauma perpetuated by the history of slavery and its aftermath. The legacy of lynching and racial terror was not only an act of violence but a tool of racial control that enforced segregation and drove mass migration out of the South. The Equal Justice Initiative documented more than 4,000 racial terror lynchings in twelve Southern states between Reconstruction and World War II. This work recognized the need for a memorial space that embraces this truth and inspires reflection and change.
Iwan Baan
Alan Ricks
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice marks the beginning of amends for these atrocities, filling a gap in a city that actively commemorates the Confederacy through historical monuments with comparatively few markers for the Civil Rights Movement.
As the first national memorial to victims of lynching in America, it gives form to a silenced history. It is a space for truth-telling, hope, healing, and reconciliation.
