International Competition Entry – Shortlisted in the top 50
Harnessing Wind and Water
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 a scheduled international passenger flight from Amsterdam to KualaLumpur crashed on 17 July 2014 losing all 283 passengers and 15 crew on board. This Memorial design helps address the philosophical need of re-affirming and re-opening life’s functions. The trauma and loss of those affected by the plane crash creates sites of individual commemoration and a memory site that materially represents traces of this historical event/ moment.
The mapping of the fated flight path is the first point of incision on the site to create a Memorial Plaza represented on the site as a cut that allows water to flow into the space of memory finally dissolving into a spiralling invisible turbine. The water turbine, symbolically disintegrates the trauma of the crash into healing and energizing spiralling water. The memorial site is also expressed by the Space of Prayers formed by a gridded space of 298 wind turbines that memorializes each lost life. A semi- submerged grid of structural framework support the wind turbines also experiment with the tidal waters, where the skeleton framework is revealed and hidden based on the time of day and season of the year. Land is used in active interaction with the rise and fall of water of the IJ, creating a constant element of surprise and uncertainty of boundaries in the park.This echoes and draws clues from the merging scapes of land, water and wind in the country.
