Team SOM
Images of the design concept
Team members
- Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), architecture, engineering and urban planning
- Rebecca Belmore, artist
- Noam Gonick, artist
- HTFC, landscape architecture
- Lyle Dick, historian
- Iraklis Lampropoulos, audio consultant
Design intent
Bapiiwin (Survival, Overcoming - Working Title)
Like a field of flagpoles stripped of their flags, Bapiiwin emerges from the landscape as a matrix of hundreds of stainless steel wands that can be explored in infinitely diverse pathways, reflecting the multitudes of unique paths towards justice for 2SLGBTQI+ people.
Central to the Monument is a soundscape developed by Rebecca Belmore and Noam Gonick that memorializes the oppression and humiliation suffered under the Purge. Words and sentences researched from Professor Wake’s Ottawa Fruit Machine tests of the 1960’s emanate from a grid of speakers below the ground and surround visitors in a disorienting array.
A central clearing is anchored by a low, heated table that is an invitation to community, dialogue, and healing, and is split into four cardinal quadrants that centre Indigenous experience.
The monument is nested within complementary landscapes. On the one hand a sloping meadow for healing and meditation, and on the other a large communal lawn for festivities and celebration.
View the other teams' designs
Click on the images below to view the design concepts of the other teams.
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