Great Memorial Day News!

Top Graphic from the WWI Commission; American Veterans by Shannon Neil

Nearly a Century Later — It is finally coming!

On 21 May 2015, the National WWI Commemoration Commission released details on the competition for the design of the National Memorial for the war. Complete information on the Memorial Design Competition with a number of helpful downloads, including the competition manual can be found at:

http://worldwar-1centennial.org/index.php/competition-overview.html 

Some Quick Facts on the Memorial and Design Competition

Memorial Site

As previously announced, the site for the National World War I Memorial is at Pershing Park in Washington, DC, less than  a quarter mile from the White House. It is a 1.8-acre parcel bounded by Pennsylvania Avenue NW on the north, 15th Street NW on the west, E Street NW on the south, and 14th Street NW on the east. 

Eligibility for Design Competition

Stage I of this competition is an open, international competition, open to any professionals, university-level students, or any other interested participants who register and pay the required submission fee. A participant may be an individual, a team of individuals, or a firm.

Schedule

The schedule is very ambitious. The first stage submittals are due by 21 July 2015. The final selection of the design and design team will be in January 2016.

Design Goals for the National Memorial Include:

1. Pershing Park will be a national World War I Memorial, in contrast to today’s park that only incidentally includes a small memorial to General Pershing and the American Expeditionary Forces under his command. 

2. The Memorial should honor the heroism and valor of the American servicemen and women who served, fought, and died in World War I, and should commemorate the tragedy and magnitude of loss suffered by the United States in the conflict. 

3. The Memorial should be timeless and meaningful for future generations, which can be achieved through appropriate interpretive elements including (but not limited to) figurative or other sculpture, traditional monument forms, and relevant quotations or other texts relating to American participation in World War I. The Memorial shall not list names of individual servicemen and women who served or were killed in World War I. 

Additional key points: The Memorial should be designed primarily as open space; buildings or indoor spaces are strongly discouraged. . . the Memorial should be designed to be constructed at a cost no greater than $20-25 million . . .