Monuments, Public Spaces, and Racial Justice

Spontaneous sidewalk shrines, ghost bikes and memorial protests rising as the 21st century ‘Memento Mori’ for the fallen of urban life become the causal fabric of the landscape. Despite the ephemerality of these makeshift shrines and movements, they embed, honor, respect, and advocate as public memorializations - reminders of everyday loss, inequity, victimization, tragedy and policy failure. The MOURNscape design studio explores the current shifts from traditional death practices to the re-contectualized rituals of urban and virtual memorials in the age of pandemic. As the world mourns victims of Covid-19 and violent killings of BIPOC, the restoration of public well-being begs demonstrable acknowledgement of the unprecedented losses of civil rights, public health and Black lives mattering. Students investigate mediated death, funeral ritual, sacred space, and monuments and their spatial transcendence to sites for public grieving. In revisiting the value of public space in a democratic society, students design landscapes for participatory mourning and activism – public spaces of safety to secure gathering, ceremony, dissent and free expression. Working with community members, students co-create enduring memorials where landscape is the element of memory – honoring the struggles and victories of the past, while acknowledging the continuing resistance and resilience of our present.

“Historical monuments are often the central organizing element of public spaces, so their destruction is an appeal to re-structure systems that are also centered on inequitable allocation of resources. As users of public spaces, and for those of us who design them, it is important to consider how we reinforce our own belonging and that of others. The way we develop and use public space is a way that we collectively define who “the public” is, and how we may participate together in public life.”- Jessica Arias