Neville Clements Palmer
November 12th, 2015
WRIT-015-03
Professor Evans
The Sandy Hook Elementary School National Memorial
Public memorials are meant to serve as a guide through a historical event rather
than serving as a blatant celebration of life or commemoration of the loss of life. By this,
I mean that public memorials are best designed when they cause their viewers to
experience a feeling and an event, rather than having the architect of the memorial show
them a singular interpretation. Allowing the visitors to be guided through an event serves
two functions. Firstly, it allows the visitor a multitude of different, subjective emotions in
that they are not told exactly what to feel and, secondly, it allows for all to access
memories of an event, regardless of whether they experienced it firsthand or not.
Constructing memorials that guide the audience through a historic event allows those
who lived through and experienced the event to recall those specific memories. It also
allows those who did not experience the event to have a sense of memory created within
them. Due to this, I do not believe that memorials should have any intended audience.
They should and can be accessible and serve as equally as important for all.
I choose to design a memorial honoring the lives of those lost in the Sandy Hook
Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. My memorial will be called “The
Sandy Hook Elementary School National Memorial.” On December 14th, 2012 at
approximately 9:35 AM, Adam Lanza forced his way through the front doors of Sandy
Hook Elementary School. After the doors were shot through, the school went under
lockdown, with administrators, teachers, and students barricading themselves inside
classrooms. Wearing black fatigues, Lanza stormed through the school, killing twenty
children and six adults during his five-minute rampage before taking his own life at
approximately 9:40 AM. Fourteen students and one teacher were killed in one classroom,
Neville Clements Palmer
November 12th, 2015
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Professor Evans
with the remaining six students and their teacher killed in another. The remaining four
adults were shot in the hallways while investigating the sounds Lanza made upon entry.
All of the students murdered were between the ages of six and seven.
To commemorate all the lives lost, I propose to construct a memorial in an empty
field in Newtown, but far from the school, as to allow the newly rebuilt Sandy Hook
community to start anew.
In my design, the memorial begins on a path of stepping-stones made of six-bythree foot granite slabs, each placed 6 inches apart from one another. The individual
stepping-stones serve to construct a sense of time throughout the memorial. The stone are
separated, putting a stress on temporality and depicting time as sequential and
incremental. They remind the individual of time by highlighting and slowing down their
experience within the monument. As opposed to being one path or vast expanse of
concrete where the visitors may wander looking at what draws their attention, the visitors
will be set on a deliberate path through the memorial on which their experience will be
broken down and slowed down by the interruption that the stones create.
This choice in design is influenced by the representation of time in Hans and
Torrey Butzer’s Oklahoma City National Memorial. At both the east and west ends of the
memorial lie the gates of time marked with 9:01 and 9:03 respectively. This design does
two things. It establishes a sense of time to guide the visitor to realize all that was lost
between those times while it also guides the visitor to take note of the last moments of
peace preceding the bombing and the first moments of recovery following the bombing
(“Outdoor Symbolic Memorial”). The stepping-stones of my memorial that lead the
visitor through my memorial will remind the visitor to take stock of these two
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Neville Clements Palmer
November 12th, 2015
WRIT-015-03
Professor Evans
aforementioned ideas before they enter, as they walk through, and after they exit the
memorial.
The stepping-stones continue for about 200 feet through the field open to the air
and free of walls. Then, visitors will reach two oversized bronze doors on their left and
right. Two undersized doors lie about 50 feet further down the stepping-stones.
Connecting the over and undersized doors on the right and left are two bronze walls.
Each wall slopes downward from the oversized door to meet the undersized door at its
height. Each doorway is fully operable.
The stepping-stones lead through the first oversized doorway on the left,
indicating the classroom that the gunman targeted first. Neither room is walled. Through
the doorway, visitors see fourteen child-sized bronze desks, organized into two rows of
seven and a teacher’s desk at the front of the room. Each desk has the name one child
who was killed in that classroom engraved in it. The teacher’s desk includes the name of
that slain teacher. The stepping-stones wind behind the back row of desks, then in
between the two rows, between the front row and the teacher’s desk, then finally behind
the desk and out of the undersized door.
Visitors of the monument are then instructed to follow the stones to the oversized
door of the other classroom. The rooms are identical except that, in this room, the
children’s desks are organized into two rows of three. This room is indicative of the six
children and one teacher lost in the second room the gunman attacked. Visitors once
again exit the classroom into the walled corridor. On each side of the wall are two names
honoring the remaining four adults who were killed during the mass shooting.
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Neville Clements Palmer
November 12th, 2015
WRIT-015-03
Professor Evans
Much importance lies in the different sizing of the doors. They are sized this way
to illustrate two things. The first is to juxtapose the smallness of the children’s desk with
the great force that came through the door. The visitor feels small from the children’s
perspective looking at the imposing size of the door. The effect of this design is similar to
the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Visitors of this memorial walk on uneven
cobblestone through a sea of rising and falling great, grey, concrete slabs. What this does
is guide the visitor into the emotional state of the persecuted Jews of the Holocaust. The
visitor becomes removed from the city by the slabs, disoriented, lost, and uneasy, just the
Jews did in fleeing their countries, being removed from their homes, sent to concentration
camps, and even sent to their deaths (Ouroussoff, Nicolai). My design has a similar
effect. The visitors are put in the position of the children, feeling threatened, feeling fear
as they look to the large door.
The second effect of my design of creating a discrepancy in size between the two
doors entering and exiting the room is to remind the visitor of how they have changed
through the memorial. The reflecting pool in the Oklahoma City National Memorial does
similar in reminding visitors of their presence through the memorial. As visitors look at
their reflections, they become part of the memorial and are reminded of how they have
been changed by what happened in Oklahoma City (“Outdoor Symbolic Memorial”). In
my design, visitors enter and exit each room in different forms, different than they were
before.
Once visitors have followed the stepping-stones through both rooms, they follow
them past the walled corridor and again into open field. After about another 200 feet, they
reach a wall of black marble, which stands perpendicular to them. The wall is reminiscent
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Neville Clements Palmer
November 12th, 2015
WRIT-015-03
Professor Evans
of a chalkboard. There are 26 slabs of marble that together form the wall, with each slab
engraved with a name of a life lost. The function of this wall is similar to the function of
the confluence of the two engraved walls of Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
Visitors of her museum walk past thousands of names inscribed on the black marble. As
they reach the confluence, they look to each end of the memorial and see as each name
begins to blend into the next and these names then blur into grey lines. The visitor is then
aware of the sheer number of those that lost their lives in battle. This is the culminating
moment in her design. The visitors are confronted with reality as it stands in front of
them (Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision). Visitors to my memorial spend their entire time
walking chronologically along the stepping-stones until they are halted at the “Wall of
Remembrance”. At this moment, the vistitors transition from a perspective inside the
event to an outside retrospective perspective, in which they too are confronted with
reality as it stands in front of them. Now, visitors are meant to stop, instead of continue,
and think upon all that was lost as it faces them.
My design fits my definition of the function of a public memorial. It succeeds in
guiding the visitor through an event to create a sense of memory. If the visitors lived
through the events in Newtown, they revive their memories by being guided through this
memorial. If did not live through the events, this memorial serves to create a sense of
memory within them through their experience in the memorial. And, as according to my
definition, my design does not target any audience and is readily accessible to all who
choose to experience it.
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Neville Clements Palmer
November 12th, 2015
WRIT-015-03
Professor Evans
I would like to thank the board for their consideration of my design and I truly
believe that my submission would serve as a proper commemoration to those lost in these
horrific acts.
-Neville Clements Palmer
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Neville Clements Palmer
November 12th, 2015
WRIT-015-03
Professor Evans
Bibliography
Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision. Dir. Freida Lee Mock. Prod. Freida Lee Mock & Terry
Sanders. PBS, 1994.
Ouroussoff, Nicolai. "A Forest of Pillars, Recalling the Unimaginable." The New York
Times. N.p., 9 May 2005. Web. 7 Nov. 2015.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/09/arts/design/a-forest-of-pillars-recallingthe-unimaginable.html?_r=0>.
"Outdoor Symbolic Memorial." Oklahoma City National Memorial. National Park
Service, n.d. Web. 7 Nov. 2015.
<https://oklahomacitynationalmemorial.org/about/outdoor-symbolic-memorial/>.
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