(De)Linking with the Past through Memorials

Abstract

Numerous examples of urban, architectural, and landscape projects indicate global and continuous interest in memorial design without a comparative study of their contextual similarities and differences. There is no clear terminological and conceptual framework of how memorials are designed nor if they are perceived as diverse types of public places. This research combines multiple results of extensive and on-going research on memorials as places for people to reconnect with past events, circumstances, or persons, with the aim of building a theoretical and conceptual framework within the domain of architectural and urban design. The main question is how the design of memorials achieves remembrance as well as healing of both places and communities through conciliation, mediation, forgetting, learning, and planning new concepts for future urban development. The term (de)linking with the past is proposed for describing the importance of achieving these various memorial functions. The resulting dualistic conceptual framework of memorials includes eleven design principles based on models and methods of spatial interventions which can enable communities to move forward from traumatic events and negative emotions towards building a basis for a better future by learning from the past.

1. Introduction to Memorials and Research Context

“Padecemos patologías de la memoria. Tanto los individuos como las sociedades necesitan equilibrar la memoria y el olvido, fijando la identidad personal o colectiva y a la vez despejando la conciencia para facilitar la inserción de lo nuevo.”

“We suffer memory disorders. Both individuals and societies need to balance memory and oblivion, defining personal or collective identity and at the same time clearing the mind to let the new come in.”

Luis Fernández-Galiano, Memorials in Arquitectura Viva, 2017 [1]

Memorials, as public places where people can reconnect with past events, circumstances, or persons, have a specific and inherent relation to their temporal urban dimension. This is assumed but rarely explored from a design perspective. Their design, meaning, and ideas relate to the past, present, and future in a way that creates new (urban, cultural, spatial, architectural, social, and landscape) values with the goals of achieving reconciliation, mediation, hope, commemoration, healing, learning, honoring, and of becoming heritage in that process [2].

Based on a growing amount of literature with project reviews, it is evident that this topic is important to various groups of people—from citizens to tourists, and from governments and politicians to activists and artists [3,4,5,6]. Projects provoke discourse and therefore engage multiple disciplines and expertise (spatial planning and design, management, social science, psychology, and neuroscience). Altogether, this indicates complexity and suggests delicacy of these project topics with expected sensibility of their solutions and ideas. Nevertheless, scientific studies rarely deal with multiple comparisons and instead focus on specific groups of memorials and their development process or relation to the type of remembrance of tragic events where post-war topics dominate [6,7,8]. This paper aims to fill that gap by providing a wider range of examples in correlation and comparison, with the focus on architecture and urban planning perspectives by asking questions: 1. Which type of memory does the project intervention refer to, and how? 2. What methods and tools were used for artistic interpretation in addressing and achieving additional values and usages for future planning of these places?

The inspiration for our research comes from parts of our doctoral research where open public spaces are explored in the context of heritage, which served as a basis for observing the relation between place-making and memory [9,10]. Our preliminary studies have shown that memorials use various forms of artistic methods to achieve the above-mentioned specific multiple impacts and benefits for communities [2,8]. The aim of this article is to provide a systematic overview of similarities and differences in used planning methods and artistic design tools, as well as to encourage new research and creativity in the application of detected methods. The objective is to answer the questions about how these places both link and delink with the past by achieving remembrance, recollection, and commemoration in relation to the past, as well as how they encourage conciliation and healing.

Memorials are related to monuments and can be considered as a specific type of monument that are not necessarily in monumental scale. Thus, it is suggested that there is a difference between “memorial” vs. “monumental”, which is fundamentally connected with theories of the historian Pierre Nora and his discourse on memory and history: “Memory is a perpetually actual phenomenon, a bond tying us to the eternal present; history is a representation of the past.” [11] (p. 8). Both memorials and monuments are means and modes of remembering (according to Nora—lieux de mémoire), but memorials, as it is shown through examples in this article, also provoke individual interpretations, while monuments serve the purpose of representing history as acknowledged in collective memory. Therefore, monuments denote assigned values according to historical, artistic, cultural, and social factors. Memorials serve the same basic purpose, and are considered to be a (specific) type of monument, but they are also focused on designing the experience and engagement of people in leaving a mark—writing inscriptions (through intentional design decision such as in the Mexico City Memorial to Violence and Kornati Memorial in Croatia, or through bottom-up citizen initiative such as in the COVID Wall Memorial in London, UK), or enabling people to bring objects (Vietnam Veteran Memorial in Washington, USA), or provoking exploration and play (Memorial to Princess Diana in London, UK and Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, Germany). In this way, memorials allow various personal interpretations and new spatial usages, while many monuments are primarily objects with defined functions and are designed to be observed and noticed, whether they are statues, monumental architecture, structures (churches, preserved heritage layers as fortifications, places), or cemeteries, with assigned political interpretation or social value within collective memory. This paper is focused on detecting how memorials achieve these individual interpretations as a part of the healing process by comparing 78 examples of memorials.

In general, memorialization has been a part of history since the beginning of human civilization. There are all sorts of examples of memorialization and forgetting in every human culture. Pathways are regarded as the first human creative act [12], but they are also connections between places of significance and symbols such as cairns, menhirs and dolmens, pyramids and temples, churches and (roadside) chapels. These elements and methods of marking are in fact (historical) place-making tools. We aim to explore current place-making tools and methods through memorials defined as anthropogenic places designed within landscapes and urban contexts, always with the associative character [8].

The results presented here report, continue on, and combine parts of the on-going research on memorials and post-disaster regeneration topics, altogether developed under the heritage urbanism approach (as part of the HERU project 2014–2018), where memorials are defined and explained through the notion of urban landscapes and cultural heritage [2,9]. Furthermore, this research is a part of the Urbanscape Emanation concept where places are explored by detecting and overlapping various multi-layered characteristics from urban planning and architectural points of view [13].

In the case of memorials, emanation “examines the addition of time and structure to space and the transition from static to dynamic models achieved by creating awareness about place” [13] (p. 7). The gathered research database fills the urban planning gap in the wider context of theory about cities, landscapes, and heritage, where contemporary memorials are, as mentioned, only partially explored.

The objectives of this study were focused on providing an overview of memorial design ideas and concepts in order to identify which intervention forms were used in which spatial settings (urban and landscape) and how this related to past events (in situ or dis-located) and with which intention (remembering/linking or interpreting/delinking). In that context, this research does not aim to explore consequences of memorial design in depth because that type of study requires more time for better assessment of the design influence and acceptance (since 57 of examples out of 78 analyzed have been built in the 21st century), and the methodology for that study should focus on a specific form of memorialization in different contexts.

The results describe memorials in comparison to their relation to time. The methods and tools used in public space design of memorials are discussed here under eleven categories: post-disaster, post-conflict, urban landscape integration, experience, digitalization, inscription, manifestation, memorial tourism, contestation, urban landscape memory, and art. The notion of (de)linking is the main contribution of this research, explained through a dualistic conceptual framework with “past as memory” and “future as planning goal”. The conclusions suggest additional memorial concepts—“cityscapes as memorial” and “memorial systems”.

2. Research Design: Selection Criteria, Data, and Analysis Methods

This study is based on literature review of memorials in combination with a comparative analysis of multiple case studies. The data were collected based on previous research conducted within the HERU scientific project through literature review from books on memorialization, architectural news, and designer websites, which was verified through field research in the following cities: Berlin, London, Madrid, New York, Rijeka, Sarajevo, Split, Vienna, Vukovar, and Warsaw. Overall, the research gathers a great variety of examples, with 78 examples chosen as representative for various forms of interventions that can be found within the tabular comparison of this paper. The selection criteria were based on two concepts: (i) to include various forms of interventions and (ii) for those projects to be recognized for defining and explaining the forms and methods of linking and delinking with the past.

The chosen interventions, therefore, vary from urban and architectural projects to land art projects, public space redesigns, and urban manifestation events. As mentioned, the variety of memorials was the main selection criterion to test if all these interventions are reminders of the past with the intention to reconciliate. An additional selection criterion was that they are recognized as significant memorial sites in order to be able to understand their intention and desired impact. The recognition of examples was checked through available publications with project descriptions that include authors’ perspectives.

The following qualified as recognized projects: awarded designs and authors, projects chosen through design competitions, and protected cultural heritage such as cityscapes, urban parks, or archeological sites. The research period focus was on the interventions built after the second half of 20th century onwards. Some earlier projects and historical examples were considered and analyzed only if their realization and significant changes or development occurred within that later time span. Although the primary spatial focus of this research on memorials in the context of the HERU research project was Europe (meaning that these projects have been visited during the HERU project), for the purpose of this paper, the research has been expanded to other geographical regions to achieve a systematic overview. For that reason, the tabular comparison is organized within geographical categories of the case studies: North and South America, Africa and Asia, and Europe.

As mentioned in the introduction, the analysis questioned: (1) Which type of memory does the project intervention refer to and how? (2) What methods and tools were used for artistic interpretation in addressing and achieving additional urban and other roles of these places for turning to the future?

The results presented in Section 3 are organized in two sections according to the analytical methods used. Section 3.1. examines theory and terminology for establishing the context for the dualistic concept of (de)linking with the past in contemporary memorials. Section 3.2. gives an overview of analyzed examples of urban memorial projects by comparing their intention (past memory, design authors, and time period) and location (scale and context). The results are summarized in Section 4, where theory and analyzed examples are combined and elaborated through the detected forms of artistic interventions and elaborating examples in the context of (de)linking.

The results are followed by discussion in Section 5 and conclusions in Section 6.

3. Results

3.1. Theoretical Framework: Defining Memorials and (De)Linking Terminology from Theory

The key terms within this research are used by diverse scientific disciplines and include many varied meanings. For the purpose of this research, the following key terms are interpreted in order to understand their diverse concepts and definitions, comparatively: identity, memorials as urbanscapes, and rehabilitation. The contemporary interpretation was based on the literature covering social, cultural, environmental, architectural, urbanistic, and economic aspects.

The term “scape” is described as the representation of a specific view, determined by the first element. From the landscape aspect, James Corner [14] indicates the contradictory definitions of Victor Gruen’s cityscape and landscape. For Gruen, landscape refers to the environment in which nature is predominant [14] (p. 235), while cityscape encompasses the built environment of buildings, paved surfaces, and infrastructures. Cityscapes play an important role in the shaping of urban environments. The urbanist aspect of the term “scape” is reflected through the elements in the cityscape: open spaces, vegetation, sense of notion and paths, and visual contrast. These urban patterns form the lines of daily movement of people and their activities [15].

The term urbanscape is defined by Oxford University Press as “urban landscape or the appearance of an urban public area”. It also refers to urban activities as a “component of the contemporary way of life and the contemporary manner of using” [16] (p. 351). Urbanscapes emerge as assimilations of landscape elements over time. Memorials as public places are a part of urbanscapes and, as such, necessarily play a wide range of roles—public places serve as the setting in which people meet their daily needs, provide spaces in which people pursue a variety of activities, and, in terms of green spaces, promote an ecologically healthy environment that contributes to the mental and psychological health of residents [17].

The term identity has a variety of meanings. In social science, identity represents the people’s source of meaning and experience [18,19]. Scholars have identified landscape as a “cultural construct where identities are formed and memories inhere” [20] (pp. 1, 2). Indeed, landscapes have their own identity function. Strobbelaar and Pedroli [21], for example, suggest that their identity is described as “the perceived uniqueness of a place” [21] (p. 322). Edward Relph describes the identity of a place as the “persistent sameness and unity, which allows that place to be differentiated from others, through a level of attachment, involvement and concerns” [22] (p. 45). Stobbelaar and Pedroli [21] also contend that people derive their own identities from the places they engage. They define this as place identity [21]. Identity also represents an evolving psychological interconnectedness of oneself and the natural environment, whereby the identification of oneself with the natural environment prompts individuals to maintain and protect the natural environment [23]. Kaymaz writes: “Place identity is an important dimension of the social and cultural life in urban areas” [19] (p. 740). Moreover, the connections between people and places are often articulated through heritage. Heritage and public memory are used as a resource to affirm a sense of identity and belonging [20]. Smith states that, “heritage provides meaning to human existence, by conveying the ideas of timeless values and unbroken lineages that underpin the identity” [24] (p. 48).

Rehabilitation is described as restoring something to its original condition or improving it after damage or decline (Farlex, Inc., n.d.). Rehabilitating the urban environment implies the improvement of building efficiency and movement with the aim of enhancing people’s quality of life [25]. In social sciences, the term rehabilitation is often used to refer to the reconciliation of urban society and the city. It facilitates social cohesion [24] and offers social support to vulnerable groups affected by disasters. It is also economic in nature, in that rehabilitation can enable communities to navigate the aftermath of a disaster through planning and infrastructure development. In terms of its environmental importance, rehabilitation is considered as “restoration of basic service and facilities, for the functioning of a community or a society, affected by disasters” [26] (p. 7). In terms of landscape, rehabilitation is reflected through the mitigation strategies required to reduce the disaster impact. It is also reflected through landscape recovery from the historical aspect by enhancing the inherited qualities within the landscape and revealing the hidden ones, through the re-presentation of the existing features and by perceiving the landscape as something that can be evolved and not held as an unchanging image [14]. The goal is, then, not just passive protection of heritage, but to balance the re-use of historic centers to maintain the urban quality of historical areas and the needs of the present [27].

The presented theoretical overview of key terms is a basis for defining dualistic (de)linking as a method and design concept to comprehend memorials as associative urbanscapes, where identity refers to connection (link) and rehabilitation can be interpreted as disconnection (delink).

Table 1. Deconstructed terms of roles in memorials. The criteria for the selection of terms derive from literature review within theoretical and analytical frameworks on memorials, while definitions, synonyms, and antonyms derive from the thesaurus.

Term	Dictionary Definition 2	Synonyms	Antonyms
KEY TERMS 1
IDENTITY	The fact of being whom or what a person or thing is.	Identification Integrity	Opposition
MEMORIALS AS ASSOCIATIVE URBANSCAPES	Statues or structures established to remind people of a person or event. They are anthropogenic places designed in landscapes or urban contexts, always with the associative character	Remembering Commemoration Tribute	Forgetting Oblivion
REHABILITATION	Restoring one’s reputation or character in the eyes of others.	Reestablishment Healing	Damage
LINKING 2
PERMANENCE	The condition or quality of being permanent, perpetual, or continued existence	Continuity Durability	Impermanence Instability
PRESERVATION	The act or process of keeping something in existence; or keeping something safe	Protection Care	Neglect Destruction
RECOGNITION	The act of recognizing; the perception of something as existing or true; the acknowledgment of achievement, service, merit	Understanding Gratitude Honor	Denial Refusal
RECOVERY	The regaining of or possibility of regaining something lost or taken away	Return Conciliation	Departure
REMEMBRANCE	A retained mental impression. The length of time over which recollection or memory extends	Reminiscence Flashback	Ignorance
RESPECT RESPECTING	The act of holding in esteem or honor, showing regard or consideration for.	Concern Appreciation	Criticism Dishonor
DELINKING 2
FORGETTING	Ceasing or failing to remember, being unable to recall	Oblivion Disregard	Awareness
FEAR	A distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; to feel apprehensive or uneasy	Anticipation Alarm/Worry Avoidance	Facing Calm
HEALING	The act or process of regaining health; curing or curative, helping to heal, becoming sound, mending	Remedial Corrective	Damaging Harmful
MITIGATION	The act of making a condition or consequence less severe and the process of becoming milder, gentler	Alleviation Cure	Increase
RECONCILIATION	An act when former enemies agree to an amicable truce. The state when someone becomes resigned to something not desired. The process of making consistent or compatible.	Compromise Harmony	Disagreement Dissension
REGENERATION	Re-creating, reconstituting, or making over, especially in a better form or condition	Reconstruction Transformation	Decline Stagnation
RENEWAL	The act of renewing or the state of being renewed and an instance of this.	Rebirth Revitalization Reaffirmation	Destruction Exhaustion
RESILIENCE	The ability of a person to adjust to or recover readily, buoyancy. The ability of a system to respond to or recover readily from a crisis, disruptive process, etc.	Flexibility Strength	Delicacy Rigidity Weakness
RESISTANCE	Opposing or withstanding. Psychiatry: opposition to an attempt to bring repressed thoughts or feelings into consciousness.	Fighting Opposition	Aid Compliance

¹ key terms elaborated in this article for defining the (de)linking concept in contemporary memorials.² bolded words are important defining elements of why the term is under the “linking with the past” group or under the “delinking with the past” group, where linking enables existence and presence without change, while delinking notions aim to change with regard to something (from the past).

provides an overview of terms in relation to the roles of memorials found in theory and in the analyzed case studies.

Since landscape is seen as a cultural construct where identities of place are formed and memories inhere [22], memorials have been explored in many studies as a source of cultural healing that enables permeance to memory and as an important urban regeneration method that brings new identity to places and enables reconciliation with the past [8,28]. Being contested as a process of representing the past [22,29], the concept of memorialscapes has been used to commemorate the history which people relate to and narrate the past to acquire meanings that foster both resistance and conflict [29,30,31], remembering and forgetting [28], recognized in this paper as both linking and delinking.

The relation between “memory” and “place” is a constant question in architecture and urban planning since every location has its past (previous) layers. When the idea of a spatial intervention is to evoke its memory, the forms of spatial memorialization can vary from formal/traditional and direct markings, signs, or initiatives (as plaques, statues, museums, or memorial practices such as processions) to indirect connections which can be unclear, ambiguous, ephemeral, or even hidden. This research has analyzed and elaborated this whole range from the architectural and urban planning points of view on memorials which have been created in recent history referring back to various historical periods and situations in order to establish possible design tools for achieving both remembrance and reconciliation.

Historical narratives and their memorialization already play a crucial role in cultural rights and collective identity according to UN reports on memorization processes on the writing and teaching of history from 2013 and 2014 [32,33]. This is especially important in post-disaster situations and post-conflict societies when memory is traumatic and painful for many people. The International Coalition of Sites of Conscience offers a toolkit for dealing with these challenges when societies need to move forward and beyond the past [34]. Furthermore, the report on stabilization and reconstruction [35] defines not only memorialization but also reconciliation and social reconstruction with types of conflict ranging from genocides to disappearances. Overall, these documents recognize the established dual importance and multiple functions of memorials in contrast to glorified monuments erected specifically for remembrance, such as honor, national prides, or dedications. Multiple roles of memorials, although contradictory in nature, add to the social dimension and importance of public space design where the fields of architects, urban designers, and landscape architects meet.

The context of this research is not a historical overview of general human memorialization, but instead it is focused on discovering the design methods and artistic forms in achieving the (de)linking concept. Although the philosophical, sociological, and historical aspects are acknowledged as significant in memorial projects, they are not part of this research scope but instead remain as implications for future interdisciplinary research.

3.2. Analytical Framework: Overview of Case Studies

Project examples show that a great number of memorials are related to negative emotions and traumatic events (

Table 2. Overview of analyzed memorials comparing the context, scale, and past situation.

Case Number	Location City, Country	Memorials Project Title or Designation, Author(s), Year (Built or Open)	Context 1	Scale 2	Past
	NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA
1.	Calgary, CAN	Memorial Drive Landscape of Memory 3: Pathway Upgrades project, Poppy Plaza, Soldiers Memorial, MBAC, 2013	urban riverfront streetscape	9.5 km	Canadian soldiers WWI
2.	Ottawa, CAN	Firefighters Memorial, PLANT Architects, 2012	urban square	0.35 ha	fallen firefighters
3.		National Holocaust Monument, Studio Libeskind, 2017	urban square	0.32 ha	Holocaust victims
4.	Edmonton, CAN	Memoryscape, MBAC, 2012	streetscape	100 m2	military and community
5.	Washington DC, USA	Vietnam Veteran Memorial Wall, Maya Lin, 1982	urban in park	150 m	killed in Vietnam War
6.		Camp Barker Memorial, After Architecture studio, 2019	school entrance	●	US oppression history
7.		National Eisenhower Memorial, Frank Gehry, 2020	urban park-plaza	1.6 ha	president Eisenhower
8.	St. Louis, USA	Gateway Arch National Park, MVVA redesign 2010–2018	urban riverfront	0.37 km2	US continental expansion
9.	New York City, USA	Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park, Louis I. Kahn, FAIA, Mitchell Giurgola Arch., 2012	urban waterfront	1.6 ha	freedom of speech, worship, from want, fear
10.	NYC, USA	National 9/11 Memorial, Michael Arad and Peter Walker, 2011	urban park, in situ	6.5 ha	9/11 terrorist attack
11.	Jersey City, USA	“Empty Sky” New Jersey memorial to 9/11 victims, Jessica Jamroz and Frederic Schwartz Architects’, 2011	urban waterfront	0.1 ha 1 ha site	New Jersey residents killed in 9/11 attack
12.	Arlington, USA	9/11 Pentagon Memorial, Keith Kaseman, Julie Beckman, 2008	urban park, in situ	0.9 ha	9/11 terrorist attack
13.	New Orleans, USA	Hurricane Katrina Memorial, Jeffrey Rouse, Chris Kroll, 2006	urban at cemetery	0.25 ha	hurricane Katrina loses
14.	Montgomery, USA	National Memorial for Peace and Justice, MASS, 2018	urban museum	0.28 ha	racial violence, injustice
15.	San Francisco, USA	Pink Triangle Park, Robert Bruce and Susan Martin, 2001	urban park	370 m2	WWII LGBTQ victims
16.		National AIDS Memorial, from 1996 national memorial at the dedicated place “the Grove” in Golden Gate Park	urban in park	4 ha	to those lost to AIDS
17.		LGBTQ Murals 3: Harvey Milk Mural and Plaza, 1980	streetscape	●	H. Milk killed 1978
18.	Puebla, MEX	“Emblematic Monument”, TEN Arquitectos, 2011	urban in park	0.7 ha	Battle of Puebla
19.	Mexico City, MEX	Memorial to Victims of Violence, Gaeta Springall Arquitectos, 2014	urban park	1.5 ha	violence victims
20.	Acatlán, MEX	“Novasem Memorial”, Atelier Ars, 2016	factory garden	850 m2	to facility founder
21.	Lima, PER	Place of Remembrance, Barclay and Crousse Arch., 2013	urban waterfront	0.5 ha	Peruvian reconciliation
	AFRICA AND ASIA
22.	Kigali, RWA	Kigali Genocide Memorial, John McAslan + Partners, 2014	urban park, in situ	0.5 ha	genocide 1994
23.	Pretoria, ZAF	Freedom Park with poignant memorials and museum, GAPP, 2010	urban park in landsc.	0.52 km2	South Africa liberation
24.	Howick, ZAF	Nelson Mandela Memorial, artist Marco Cianfanelli, 2012	countryside landsc.	●	captured 1962–1990
25.	Qushan, CHN	Wenchuan Earthquake Memorial, Atelier Li Xinggang, 2013	urban park, in situ	14.5 ha	earthquake 2008
26.	Zanzibar, TZA	Slave Market Memorial, Clara Sörnäs skulpturess, 1998	urban, in situ of pit	●	reminder of slave trade
27.	Ishinomaki, JPN	Stone Memorial, Koishikawa Architects, 2014	urban in landscape	6.5 m2	victims of earthquake
28.	Hiroshima, JPN	Hiroshima Peace Centre and Memorial Park, Kenzō Tange, 1955	urb. riverfront, in situ	15 ha	nuclear bomb 1945
29.	Yaounde, CMR	Reunification Monument, Gedeon Mpondo, Engelbert Mveng, 1970s	streetscape park	0.6 ha	merging of Cameroon
30.	Beirut, LBN	Memorial sculpture “The Gesture”, Nadim Karam, 2021	urban in port in situ	25 m high	port blast
31.		Beirut Memorial wall, Brady the Black, Art of Change, 2020–2021	urban in port in situ	350 m	port blast
	EUROPE
32.	London, GBR	Holocaust Memorial, R. Seifert, Derek Lovejoy and Partners, 1983	stone in park	●	to victims of the Shoah
33.		Princess of Wales Memorial, Gustafson Porter + Bowman, 2004	fountain in park	0.56 ha	life of Diana Princess
34.		National COVID Memorial Wall, Bereaved Families for Justice, Led by Donkeys, 2021	urban riverfront	500 m long	pandemic victims
35.		Cherry Groce Memorial Pavilion, David Adjaye, 2021	urban pavilion	●	police raid 1985
36.	Vardø, NOR	Steilneset Memorial 3, Peter Zumthor, Louise Bourgeois, 2011	pavilion in landsc. in situ	125 m	witch trial victims
37.	Berlin, GER	Soviet War memorial parks in Berlin 3	urban parks, in situ	2–8 ha	Battle of Berlin
38.		Berlin Wall Memorial, Kohlhoff and Kohlhoff, 1998	urban park, in situ	1.4 km	Berlin wall situation
39.		The Jewish Museum, Daniel Libeskind, 2001	urban museum	1.5 ha	Jewish history and Holocaust meaning
40.		Memorial to murdered Jews in Europe—“Holocaust Memorial”, Peter Eisenman, Buro Happold, 2005	urban square and information center	1.9 ha	Holocaust victims
41.		Moabit Cellular Prison History Park, Glaßer und Dagenbach, 2006	urban park, in situ	2.5 ha	former prison
42.		Memorial to the Persecuted Homosexuals under National Socialism, Michael Elmgreen, Ingar Dragset, 2008	pavilion/installation in park	●	WWII LGBTQ victims
43.		Memorial for Sinti and Roma Holocaust, artist Dani Karavan, 2012	urban parks	0.1 ha	WWII genocide
44.	Esterwegen, GER	Esterwegen Memorial to mass killings, WES-LA, 2011	in landscape	8.4 ha	victims of 15 camps in the Ems region
45.	Dachau, GER	Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site	urban in park, in situ	18 ha	Holocaust memory
46.		Stumble Stones 3, 15 commemorative plaques, Gunter Demning	streetscape, in situ	●	Holocaust victims
47.	Saarbrücken, GER	Place of the Invisible Memorial, prof. Jochen Gerz initiative, 1991	urban on plaza	2146 cobblestones	anti-memorial to Jewish cemeteries
48.	Amsterdam, NLD	Dutch Holocaust Memorial of Names, Libeskind, Rijnboutt, 2021	urban installation by Hermitage Museum	0.15 ha	Holocaust victims
49.	Zijderveld, NLD	Bunker 599 at New Dutch Waterline 3, RAAAF + Atelier Lyon, 2010	in landsc., in situ	150 m	defense line 1815–1940
50.	Oświęcim, POL	Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, since 1947	urban center, in situ	0.2–1.71 km2	Holocaust camps
51.		The Road, Oskar Hansen, 1958 project 4	urban road, in situ	1 × 0.07 km	counter-memorial
52.		The Great Synagogue Memorial Park, Narchitectura, 2021	urban park, in situ	0.15 ha	burnt synagogue 1939
53.	Michniow, POL	The Mausoleum of the Martyrdom of Polish Villages, Nizio Design International, 2020	urban park	1.6 ha	WWII repressions in Polish rural areas
54.	Warsaw, POL	Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Stanisław Ostrowski, 1925	urban on plaza	3 ha	fallen Polish soldiers
55.		Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, Leon Suzin 1948, with POLIN museum, Kuryłowicz and Associates, Lahdelma and Mahlamäki 2013	urban on plaza in park, in situ	4 ha park	WWII uprising
56.		Monument to the Fallen and Murdered in the East, Maksymilian Biskupski, 1995	urban streetscape	0.17 ha	victims deported to Siberia + Katyn massacre
57.		The Katyn Museum, BBGK Architekci, 2015	urban, 19th c. citadel	3 ha site	Katyn massacre 1940
58.		Memorial to Smolensk air crash victims, Jerzy Kalina, 2018	urban on plaza	●	96 killed in crash 2010
59.	Abain-Saint-Nazaire, FRA	Notre-Dame-de-Lorette Memorial, AAPP/Agence d’Architecture Philippe Prost, 2016	urban at cemetery, in situ of battle	2.1 hasite	WWI commemoration
60.	Riversaltes, FRA	Riversaltes Camp Memorial, R. Ricciotti, Passelac and Roques, 2015	in desert landscape, in situ of Camp Joffre	0.4 ha	Spanish Civil War, WWII, decolonization
61.	Madrid, ESP	11 March Memorial for the victims of terrorist attack at Atocha Station, Estudio FAM, 2007	urban on plaza, in situ	0.1 ha site	train bombings in 2004
62.	Gibellina, ITA	The Cretto di Burri (crack of Burri) memory of a city lost in earthquake, Alberto Burri artist (project 1985–89), 2006	urban fabric in landscape, in situ	8 ha	1968 Belice earthquake
63.	Genoa, ITA	“Polcevera Park and the Red Circle”, MIC-HUB Stefano Boeri Architetti, Metrogramma, Inside Outside, 2019 competition, unbuilt	urban park, in situ	0.23 km2	bridge accident
64.	Bologna, ITA	The Bologna Shoah Memorial, SET Architects, 2016	urban stairs on plaza	0.2 ha	Holocaust victims
65.	Chernobyl, UKR	Wormwood Star Memorial Park Complex 3, with The Third Angel at the entrance by Anatoly Haidamaka, 2010–2011	cityscape 5	along 2 km	nuclear accident
66.	ex-Yugoslavian countries	Memorial parks with monumental sculptures 3, more than 90 sites, erected from the 1960s to the 1980s	urban parks in towns and landsc.	varies	post-warmemorialization
67.	Ljubno, SLO	General Maister Memorial Park, Bruto + Primož Pugelj, 2007	urban riverfront	0.2 ha	general+soldiers, WWI
68.	Rijeka, CRO	Memorial Bridge dedicated to veterans, 3LHD, 2001	urban waterfront	262 m2	Independence war 1990s
69.	Vukovar, CRO	Water Tower Memorial of Independence War, Radionica Arhitekture, 2020	urban riverfront, in situ	1.2 ha	Independence war 1990s
70.		Memorial Cemetery, monument from 2000 by Đurđa Ostoja	urban cemetery	6 ha	Independence war 1990s
71.	Hrvatska Kostajnica, CRO	Gordan Lederer “Broken Landscape” Memorial 3, NFO, Petar Baršić, 2015	in landscape, in situ	600 m2	death of HRT journalist Independence war 1990s
72.	Island of Kornat, CRO	Monument to Kornati Firefighters, Nikola Bašić, 2010	in landscape, land art, in situ	3 ha	to 12 firemen killed in the line of duty
73.	Sarajevo, BIH	Memorial plaque to citizens killed at Markale, 1996	urban market, in situ	815 m2	terrorist bombing 1994
74.		Sarajevo Red Line Project, urban manifestation, 2012	streetscape	11,541 chairs	siege of Sarajevo 1990s
75.		Multimedia program—The Siege of Sarajevo 1992–2022, held from 4 April to 6 April 2022	cityscape	x	siege of Sarajevo 1990s
76.		Sarajevo Roses 3, Nedžad Kurto, 1996	streetscapes, in situ	●	killing sites in Sarajevo
77.		Memorial to Children Killed 1992–1995, Mensud Kečo, 2009	urban in park	r = 5 m	children war victims
78.	Srebrenica, BIH	Srebrenica Genocide Memorial Centre and Cemetery, 2002	cemetery, in situ	4.5 ha	genocide 1995

¹ Where intervention is situated: urban = part of settlements (inside or at border)—villages, towns, and cities; landsc., landscape = outside of settlements, part of the nature such as forests, national parks, mountains, fields etc.; waterfront = near a river, lake, or sea; streetscape = urban intervention along the street or at the crossroads. Additionally, all in situ projects are marked in the table by the shading color representing the scale analysis as explained in footnote 2 of this table—the shading represents a strong connection between the project context and past events, which is why the shading color in those examples colors all three analytical columns (context–scale–past). ² Scale is compared through dimensions which are measured according to the type of interventions: m and m² for small-scale and architectural interventions smaller than 1000 m², ha for medium urban interventions up to 20 ha and km² for cityscape interventions above 20 ha, “x” marks an intervention with no measurement, such as events, and ● marks small-scale interventions considered to be point interventions, such as small pavilions and sculptures which are not monumental. ³ Projects which are part of a wider system, routes, or a network. ⁴ The Road by Oskar Hansen is the winning project at an international competition for a monument on the Birkenau grounds, unbuilt because of violation of the 1947 law on the inadmissibility of changes to the campgrounds. ⁵ cityscape = a view of a city; the characteristic appearance of a city; or cities observed as landscapes, while the term urbanscape is used in this research to denote parts of cities as landscapes (a view of a characteristic part of a city).

). Although this is not a necessary rule since memorialization can generally and historically be related to celebrations, processions, and rituals (megaliths, sculptures), in the contemporary sense, designing urban public places connected to the memory of past—lieux de mémoire [11,36]—gained momentum in the 20th century with the post-war plaques, memorial parks, and sculptures, especially after World War II, with the peak happening now in the 21st century. In between those periods, memorials were constantly reinvented and redefined through a wide range of interventions differing in their settings, scales, roles, designs, and intentions for desired outcomes.

We focused on this range and time span from the architectural and urban planning points of view without attempting to provide a historical overview, although memorialization as a form of remembering and healing can also be detected in historical examples, such as memorials to the European plague(s) which are reminders of great tragedy [37] but also a form of rehabilitation for the community.

While memorials are becoming a common tool for place-making, bringing materiality to collective memory, and building identity, over-memorialization has also become a question and sometimes an issue. When memory is too painful, the question is when and in which form to act in order for the community to be able to add new meaning and new concepts for future development. This is the case with the most painful memories and cities which are often symbols in post-conflict situations, such as Warsaw (World War II), Vukovar (massacre 1991, the Croatian War of Independence), Sarajevo (Siege of Sarajevo in 1992, Bosnian war), and Kigali (genocide in 1994, Rwandan Civil War). Reinventing traditional memorialization has led to new types of interventions under the notion of anti-memorialization, with the idea of indirect and artistic forms of intervention already noticed in the examples such as the Vietnam War Memorial (1989) in Washington and the Place of the Invisible Memorial (1991). The Place of the Invisible Memorial, located on a square in Saarbrücken and dedicated to Jewish cemeteries, began in 1990 as an unofficial academic initiative of engraving the names of German Jewish cemeteries on square floor elements on the invisible underside of the stones. It was officially recognized in 1991 and finished in 1993, and it is discussed in literature as an “anti-memorialization projects”, presenting a type of intervention with programmatic temporality and ephemeral processes.

These “anti” movements have created theoretical basis for the (de)linking hypothesis because the analyzed contemporary examples show that this intention has become almost a rule in the creative process of planning and designing these types of public spaces. Hence, this research points out that contemporary memorials are interventions which create new or redesigned public spaces and have characteristics of anti-memorialization projects.

3.2.1. Introduction of Memorials as Public Space Projects

New interventions and concepts aim to provoke, to interact with the public, and maybe to change it. The process of erecting memorials enables connections with the past through public space formation and, at the same time, gathers associations, individuals, designers, culture, political agendas, and many other factors. This complexity makes it difficult to establish guidelines for their design. Table 2, therefore, enables us to group memorials according to their contextual setting, intervention scale, and a link to past events or situations.

3.2.2. Memorials and Spatial Context

According to context, memorials were detected in various types of setting, from urban squares to different waterfronts, as well as in natural settings. Out of the 78 memorial examples in total listed in Table 2, the majority (70 memorials) are part of an urban setting, which means that they are placed in an urban environment within a city, a town, or a village, or at their peripheral border. Eight identified examples are interventions within a landscape setting, meaning located in natural surroundings, and they are as follows: Nelson Mandela Memorial in South Africa, Steilneset Memorial in Norway, Esterwegen Camp Site in Germany, Bunker 599 in the Netherlands, Riversaltes Camp Memorial in France, Cretto di Burri in Italy, and two memorials in Croatia—Gordon Lederer Memorial and Kornati Firefighters Memorial.

All of the analyzed examples of memorials are public places—with both open-space projects as well as closed public spaces such as pavilions, museums, visitor centers, and other buildings. Interventions are either inside the existing open public spaces such as plazas, parks, and streetscapes or they create new plazas and parks. This typological variety of open public places within dominating urban settings for memorial projects can also be seen in Table 2 under the context column through identified urban categories as follows: urban waterfronts and urban riverfronts, urban (in) parks and urban (in) squares, urban cemeteries, urban streetscapes, cityscapes, and urban market.

Out of 78 examples, 26 interventions are either in situ or on-site projects in the specific location where the event of the memory took place. Among the remaining 52 analyzed examples which are not in situ projects, there are those which are carefully positioned on sites with particular significance, for example, on other historical sites which are not directly connected to the event of the memory, such as the Katyn Museum in Warsaw, located at the 19th c. citadel fortress. Some projects are placed in such a way that they form an indirect connection to the place of the event. A good example is the “Empty Sky” project in New Jersey as a memorial to Jersey residents who were killed during the 9/11 terrorist attack, which is located on the riverfront opposite the demolished WTC towers in Manhattan and, as such, has a visual connection pointing and directing to the skyline where the towers used to be. In all of the projects, the location and placement of the memorial proved to be of great importance when planning the interventions, and various criteria are applied when the in situ model is not an option. One of them is close proximity to a particular urban facility connected to memorialization, as either a compatible function (such as the educative memorial role in the Camp Barker Memorial to Civil War and oppression situated in Washington DC through the designed entrance on the fence of the Garrison Elementary school) or as a conflicting situation with the aim to achieve reconciliation (COVID Memorial Wall in London situated directly opposite the Houses of Parliament on the south bank of the Thames riverfront).

3.2.3. Memorials and Scale

According to scale in relation to the size of the project intervention, memorials can be interventions ranging from small-scale artistic installations through architectural buildings up to new urban areas and large-scale planning projects. Therefore, it is possible to define minimal, medium, and large scales of interventions, which are denoted by different measurement values in Table 2. The minimal scale consists of minimalistic interventions such as signs and sculptures or small-scale walls, which are marked as ● in dimension because they are “dots/points” as interventions from architectural and urban points of view, or their dimensions are given in meters to point out their specific scale in height or length. The medium scale comprises various architectural and urban projects, where it can be defined that interventions in architectural scale are those in the range from 100 square meters up to 10,000 square meters (1 hectare), while those in the urban scale range from 1 hectare up to 10 hectares. Planning scale or large-scale interventions include planned areas and complex projects such as memorial visitor centers or new urban parks with public buildings and cityscapes which exceed 10 hectares.

3.2.4. Memorials and the Past

According to the type of past memory which memorial design refers to, it is possible to group the memorial projects in various ways. Many projects refer to and reflect on conflict situations, especially wars. They commemorate victims of war in general or honor specific events such as one battle, a mass killing, or a specific group of people. Among the post-conflict memorials, there is a smaller group of examples which honor a single person who had significant historical influence and is somehow connected to a tragic death or suffering and pain. Such examples analyzed in this research are Diana Princess of Wales (memorial in London), Nelson Mandela (memorial installation in South Africa), Dwight D. Eisenhower (memorial in Washington DC), Harvey Milk (the first openly homosexual elected official in California) (mural in San Francisco), and Dorothy Cherry Groce (an innocent victim of a police shooting in a planned raid which triggered the Brixton riots) (memorial pavilion in London).

Therefore, the examples and theory confirm that all memorials can be categorized as either post-conflict or post-disaster, with a small number of those having specific or ambiguous memories. The post-conflict projects refer to human-made situations, either intentional or unintentional, like war, violence, genocides, mass killings, terrorist attacks, murders, and accidents, which are often human mistakes and unintentional in nature such as vehicle crashes (all possibilities—cars, airplanes, trains, or buses) or even situations such as a pandemic. The post-disaster projects relate only to natural catastrophes such as earthquakes, natural fires (like after volcanic eruptions), tsunamis, hurricanes, droughts, and floods. Memorials connected to ambiguous memorialization related to more general ideas, such as freedom, are a specific group of remembrance. As such, this specific group can be regarded as a subcategory of the post-conflict group since these memorials are related to human-made constructs originating from a conflicting life, nature, or a situation.

3.3. Spatial and Urban Models of Remembering

These results describe multiple ways in which places connect with past events. Urban and architectural interventions such as memorial museums, memorial parks, and memorial visiting centers are detected, and well-known connections to past events are described in various studies [38,39,40,41,42]. Furthermore, it is possible to detect different models of remembering, honoring, recognizing, and paying tribute, such as (a) marking the locations and/or event data, (b) preserving the location and spatial proportions, and (c) symbolic representations.

3.3.1. Direct Remembering of the Past

Marking the locations and/or event data (a) can be performed by putting up signs, plaques, or sculptures. Examples of preserving memory by writing down data are numerous walls with lists of names, such as the Vietnam War memorial in Washington DC, the Canadian Firefighters memorial in Ottawa, or the list of the Katyn massacre victims at the end of the Katyn Museum tour in Warsaw. The lists are often chronological in reference to the year of death (as in Vietnam Veteran Memorial in Washington, DC, USA) or age of the victims (9/11 Pentagon Memorial, USA), or are alphabetical (as in the Ring of Remembrance Memorial in Abain-Saint-Nazaire, France), and both enable a clear and easy overview. Nevertheless, a list can also be random, provoking exploration and search, such as in the “Empty Sky” New Jersey memorial with a large-scale font print of the names of New Jersey residents who died in the 9/11 terrorist attack. The National COVID Memorial Wall is an example of inscriptions about people who died during the COVID pandemics, which is a form of participation as a result of activist work. The memorial plaque to the citizens killed at Markale market in Sarajevo forms a wall with 67 names, each on a memorial plaque with dimensions of 0.6 m × 0.8 m. The memorial to child victims from the area of besieged Sarajevo 1992–1995 has a glass sculpture in a circular fountain and a list of 521 names (last name, father‘s name, first name, year of birth, and year of death of the killed child) on seven cylinders of anodized aluminum placed on a concrete plinth (Figure 1).

None of the examples mentioned above aims to mark the exact location of the tragedy. Instead, they are placed in significant urban parks (Vietnam War memorial, Empty Sky memorial, memorial to child victims, the Katyn Museum), waterfronts (COVID Memorial Wall in London), and squares (the firefighters memorial). Examples of marking the locations are the Stolpersteine/Stumbling blocks (Figure 2) for the victims of the Nazi regime, which are placed in more than 20 countries in front of the last known location of the victims; Sarajevo Roses mark, in color, the locations where three or more people were killed in the city; the sculpture of a broken camera lens by Petar Baršić in the Gordon Lederer Memorial on Čitluk Hill in the Hrvatska Kostajnica area, which is placed where the official journalist was hit and killed by a sniper during the war in Croatia in the 1990s; and the sculpture by Clara Sörnäs for the Slave Market Memorial at the location of the pit where slaves were held captive.

3.3.2. Remembrance through Preceptive and Spatial Connectivity

Preserving the location and spatial proportions (b) is evident in Cretto di Burri, where the land art method was used to create a concrete sculpture of the entire city hit by an earthquake. The street network is a preserved memory through its proportions, while built areas are all concrete volumes. In the 9/11 memorial complex in New York City, two voids in the new park and visitor center represent the proportions of the demolished towers in their layout. Two more examples also mark the layout location with their interventions. The Wenchuan Earthquake Memorial Museum has incorporated the land crack into the project design as an architectural and urban cut under the topographical manipulation of a green roof, while the Great Synagogue Memorial Park marks, in layout, the synagogue demolished in WWII in Oświęcim, Poland.

3.3.3. Symbolism

Symbolical representations (c) give endless possibilities for the creative design of a memory in space, and they can be more direct, such as in the Hurricane Katrina memorial, where the spiral is a spatial composition and sign, or they can be hidden, with meanings to discover by learning and exploring, such as in Poppy Square in Calgary in Canada, where inscribed quotes and texts aim for visitors to discover a story. The pink triangle symbol, referring to the concentration camps, is reasserted in a small, 370 m² memorial park in San Francisco as a decorative urban garden. The common religion sign of a cross is used in the Kornati memorial to commemorate the tragic deaths of twelve firemen killed in the line of duty, which is achieved by using large-scale symbols in a landscape setting made from dry-stone walls for a cross 0.6 m wide and 1.2 m high, with the longer axis about 25 m long and the shorter axis in golden ratio, each with the names of firefighters and other massages. Six of these dry-stone walls in the form of a cross mark the exact location of the death of six fireman who died on site of the tragedy, which is why they are the furthest from the chapel, while the other six symbolize those who died in hospitals. Water features are often used to represent life, such as in the Diana Memorial Fountain in London, as well as in the children memorial in Sarajevo. Leaving a permanent testimonial, as in the case of the Berlin Wall memorial(s) or the water tower in Vukovar, which are integrated into the contemporary city in different ways, has proven to be a powerful tool in provoking emotions and reaching the society while also having an educative purpose as a form of direct learning about the past through historical element(s).

Overall, multiple ways in which memorials connect to the past enable creative and artistic design interpretations which achieve duality of both remembering and healing, but they also have multiple meanings for different visitors and communities. Therefore, the following chapters explore and discuss the (de)linking concepts of the multiple roles which memorials incorporate.

4. Synthesis: (De)Linking with the Past through Interpretative Methods/Conceptualizing Intervention Forms

“If this memorial is to serve its total purpose, it must not only be a tribute to the dead; it must contain a message for the living...power through unity...”

Enos Poor Bear, Sr., Oglala Lakota Elder [43]

Based on the previous overview of contemporary memorials, the following synthesis in this article is focused on the design tools and methods for achieving both links with the past and delinks from negative emotions related to the past. The research analysis used here for observing the (de)linking notion is a discursive and narrative conceptualization based on publicly available stories and the intentions described by the authors.

The structure of this chapter consists of eleven (11) detected interpretative methods (Section 4.1, Section 4.2, Section 4.3, Section 4.4, Section 4.5, Section 4.6, Section 4.7, Section 4.8, Section 4.9, Section 4.10 and Section 4.11) as follows: post-disaster, post-conflict, urban landscape integration, experience, digitalization, inscription, manifestation, memorial tourism, contestation, urban landscape memory, and art form. All methods are first defined through theory and then described through the example(s) from Table 2. which are representative to describe and understand the intervention forms and interpretative methods, so not all of the memorials from Table 2 were used in this synthesis chapter.

Table 3. Overview of Section 4. Synthesis through eleven (Section 4.1, Section 4.2, Section 4.3, Section 4.4, Section 4.5, Section 4.6, Section 4.7, Section 4.8, Section 4.9, Section 4.10 and Section 4.11) detected interpretative methods in comparison to analyzed memorial projects.

Memorials (De)Linking Concepts	Description of Interpretative Method	Groups (cn = Case Number of Analyzed Example in Table 2)	Criteria
Post-disaster	Post-disaster memorialization including disaster resilience that involves regeneration and renewal	Post-earthquake: Wenchuan Memorial in China (cn.25), Stone Memorial in Japan (cn.27) and Cretto di Burri in Italy (cn.62) Post-hurricane: Katrina Memorial in USA (cn.13)	natural disasters
Post-conflict	Reconciliation through remembrance referring to human-made disasters, errors, and tragedies—subcategory of post-disasters.	War memorials: genocide/mass killing/terrorist attack memorials; reminders of battles, dedications to victims/veterans (58% of analyzed examples) Violence and injustice memorials: Memorial to victims of violence in Mexico (cn.19), murals in San Francisco (cn.17), oppression in USA (cn.6), racial violence (cn.14), slave market (cn.26), killings (cn.35, cn.36) Accidents and human negligence: Explosions as in Chernobyl (cn.65) and Beirut Port (cn.30), bridge accident in Genoa, Italy (cn.63), firefighters fallen on duty (cn.2 in Canada and cn.72 in Croatia), air crash in Poland (cn.58), pandemic (cn.34)	historical situation and social significance
Urban landscape integration	Integrating remembrance into daily life	Parks and plazas: Gateway Arch Park in St. Louis, USA (cn.8), Wenchuan Memorial Museum and Park (cn.25), Diana Memorial Fountain in Hyde Park in London, GBR (cn.33), Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, Germany (cn.40), Atocha Station Memorial in Madrid, Spain (cn.61) Streetscapes and places of connecting urban areas: Poppy Plaza in Calgary in Canada (cn.1), National COVID Memorial Wall Mural in London, GBR (cn.34), Memorial pedestrian bridge in Rijeka, Croatia (cn.68), Sarajevo Roses in BIH (cn.76), factory garden in Mexico (cn.20), Stumble Stones (cn.46)	combination with everyday activities
Experience	Use and involvement	Walkscapes: “manipulation of movement” [8]/invitation to walk through and to stop at vista points Perception through senses—sound, smell: waterfronts, nature sounds, cemeteries Inviting to play and explore: memorial fountain, museums, pavilions, plazas	activity within memorials
Digitalization	Virtual memorialization	Databases: memorial places and catalogue data on groups of memorials such as holocaust museums Virtual presentation of memorial heritage: COVID Wall Memorial (cn.34) [44]	adding a virtual dimension to built memorials
Inscription	(Re)inscribing memory into space (inscription: a historical, religious, or other record cut, impressed, painted, or written on stone, brick, metal, or other hard surface)	Walls and lists: a form of memorialization, present in combination with a large number of people to whom the memorial is dedicated: Firefighters Memorial in Canada (cn.2), Vietnam Veteran Memorial Wall (cn.5), and Empty Sky (cn.11) in USA Quotes, info points with stories and plaques: Poppy Plaza in Canada (cn.1), Memorial plaques wall in Sarajevo, BIH (cn.73), Broken Landscape in Croatia (cn.71), Memorial to child victims in Sarajevo (cn.77), Invisible memorial in Germany (cn.47) Enabling visitors to write messages: Memorial to victims of violence in Mexico (cn.19), COVID Memorial in London, GBR (cn.34), Kornati Memorial in Croatia (cn.72)	writings as a form of spatial attraction and intervention
Manifestation	Event that constitutes a place of memory	Historical processions Annual commemorations Initiative for one-time events: Sarajevo red line project in BIH (cn.74)	dedication and commemorative character
Memorial tourism	Visit to a memorial site as a source of funding	Museums and memorial centers: Holocaust museums and visitor centers (in Ottawa cn.3., in Berlin cn.40, in Amsterdam cn.48, in Oświęcim cn.50), Peace Centre in Hiroshima in Japan (cn.28) Cities and cityscapes recognized by tragedies and memorials: Berlin (cn.37–43), Warsaw (cn.54–58), Sarajevo (cn.73–77)	economic value
Contestation	Arena and debate of meaning with identity struggles	Place of reconciliation and dialogue Provoking public debate	reactions including different groups
Urban landscape memory	Conserving traces of memory in the urban landscape	Artefacts: parts and elements left with minimal interventions on purpose (Vukovar Watertower in Croatia cn.69) Traces: marking and including traces of tragedies in memorialization (Sarajevo Roses in BIH cn.74) In situ: projects preserving the location (35% of analyzed projects are located at the place of tragedy)	preservation or tangible and intangible elements
Art forms	Symbolism and memorial land art	Interventions and projects chosen through public design competitions, including various artistical values, with authors belonging to different art forms such as: Sculptures and pavilions: Nelson Mandela Memorial in South Africa (cn.24), Slave Market memorial sculpture in Tanzania (cn.26), Stone Memorial in Japan (cn.27), Cherry Groce Memorial Pavilion in London GBR (cn.35), Steilneset Memorial in Norway (cn.36), Broken Landscape (cn.71) Street art values and murals: National COVID Memorial in London GBR (cn.34), Katrina Memorial in USA (cn.11), Harvey Milk Mural in San Francisco (cn.17) Land art and built topographies: Emblematic monument in Mexico (cn.18), Wenchuan Earthquake Memorial in China (cn.25), Cretto di Burri in Italy (cn.62), Memorial Park in Slovenia (cn.67), Kornati Memorial (cn.72) Landmarks: Gateway Arch National Park in USA (cn.8), The Jewish Museum in Berlin Germany (cn.39), Atocha Station Memorial in Spain (cn.61) Literature and performance: Sarajevo Red Line in BIH (cn.74)	inclusion of artists

is an overview of interpretative methods with examples, as an introduction to Synthesis parts.

4.1. The Notion of Post-Disaster Memorialization

As already mentioned, it is possible to distinguish a post-disaster memorial intervention from a post-conflict one. Post-disaster memorialization is defined through the process where memorial sites interpret and contextualize the (natural) disaster experience by re-shaping the affected landscape. During the disaster impact, open public places reaffirm their meaning and values as places of adjustment to cope with the disaster, but they also became important in the aftermath of the disaster as places of healing and reflection. Open public spaces are exposed to the disaster effects and, as such, they undergo different forms of alteration that transform the urbanscape and disrupt its identity. Under the disaster impact of natural forces, the urbanscape can be recovered and rebuilt in the post-disaster context—memorials being one of the new layers of the urbanscape.

Post-disaster memorial sites serve as a symbol of resilience to preserve the memory and to commemorate the victims, but they also serve as an urban regeneration tool in the post-disaster rehabilitation process [9]. There are four analyzed post-disaster memorial examples in this research—three in the context of earthquakes (interventions in China, Japan, and Italy) and one in the context of a hurricane (USA).

The previously mentioned Cretto di Burri in Italy was a long process of constructing a concrete city-scale sculpture of the city that was destroyed and disappeared in the 1968 earthquake in the countryside surroundings, where the method of contrasting the design to the landscape was used as a tool for making history visible and understandable, but it also creates a new landmark and a tourist site as a concept and plan for the future, which makes it a form of delinking or moving on with hope. A vista pathway for observing the sculpture from the lower-level side, a museum with ruins southeast of the sculptural land art, and careful placement in line with the existing roads are all confirmations that this intervention was imagined and planned through the tourist dimension as an attraction; therefore, it is a reminder with a plan for future benefit as a (de)linking concept.

In the China example, the memorial center is a large-scale spatial intervention with direct reference to the earthquake destruction positioned in situ. The memorial is built on the site of the Beichuan Middle School where more than 1000 pupils and teachers were killed in the 2008 earthquake. The architects used the “spatial crack” as a concept for the new building, merging it with the landscape through the topography of a green roof plane. This concept tries to make the new building almost invisible in order to highlight the natural disaster mark. The project also gives back a new spatial value to the wounded community in the form of a contemporary park area.

In Japan, there is a small-scale, 6.5 m² intervention positioned thoughtfully on a hill between an important cherry tree and a temple as remembrance of 18,000 victims in the 2011 earthquake. It is a place for prayers, built with local materials representing victims and with a mirror sloping top that connects to other locations hit badly by the earthquake through radiating lines indicating the direction for prayers to disperse. Furthermore, this roof reflects the cherry tree blooming in the spring as a reminder of the spring period, when the natural disaster hit the region, but in a way that this tree also symbolizes new hope and life.

The Hurricane Katrina Memorial in New Orleans is built at the historic Charity Hospital Cemetery as a final centralized resting place to honor all victims known and unknown. It has a spiral layout shape, reminiscent of the disaster form, which also creates processual momentum to reflect on the event between signs with inscriptions, an artistic mural, central benches.

4.2. Post-Conflict Memorials

Conceptualizing memorials in the form of post-conflict memorialization refers to memorial sites used to commemorate history through the preservation of painful heritage, in which people relate to the past and narrate it to acquire meanings that foster both conflict and resistance [29,30,31], as well as remembering and forgetting [28]. Post-conflict memorial sites refer to sites affected by human-made disasters, which can be caused by non-intentional human actions, such as transport accidents and technological failures, as well as intentional human actions, such as terrorism, genocide, and conflicts of war. When affected by wars, as intentional human-made forces, the urbanscape identity becomes redefined and needs to be re-assessed in the post-disaster rehabilitation process. Open public spaces in the city play an important role in the post-conflict rescue operation, resilience, and recovery process [45,46], but they also shape the patterns of disaster commemorations, inscribed within the landscape, by neglecting or accepting the memory, rehabilitating the urbanscape identity, and presenting the possibility of reconciliation with the past [9].

This research shows the range and multiple ways of how contemporary memorials can deal with post-conflict situations by creating new public places or by becoming additions to the existing places such as urban parks and plazas. In this way, these memorials become part of urban landscape. For example, Berlin is a city with numerous memorials. The Holocaust memorial is a new and recognizable urban plaza, and, just across the Ebertstrasse street from this memorial, there is a pavilion intervention inside Tiergarten park as the Memorial to the Persecuted Homosexuals under National Socialism, which uses the park as a background setting and focuses on the artistic idea with explorative engagement of curious visitors.

4.3. Urban Landscape Integration of Memorials

Keeping in mind that memorials are part of urbanscapes, conceptualizing memorials in the form of urban landscape integration further defines the interaction process between memorials and the urban and natural landscape of the city. These memorial sites, as public places, become an integrated part of our everyday life. They strengthen urban collective memory by transmitting historical and social memory. The frequency of this interaction influences social memory [47] and fosters a stronger sense of belonging [48]. The interaction with the city is not only used to portray history but to reveal how the spaces within the urban and natural landscape convey a deeper meaning [48] (p. 562). Deeper and sometimes unexpected meanings can be found in the mentioned Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, where the plaza is conceived, not through the two-dimensional floor plane, but as a three-dimensional topography for spatial discovery and movement, enabling everyone to find their own meanings and emotions, which the scale of the intervention provoke. By not being too direct, this memorial adds just enough abstractions, which makes it significant in a more universal way for all visitors and not only Jews to reflect on their own fears and tragedies (Figure 3).

The size of this memorial within the city center makes it difficult to avoid, so many visitors and residents pass through it daily, which is an indicator of integration between the memorial and everyday life. Again, as mentioned in the earthquake memorial in China, the museum part is underground, adding to the symbolism and giving advantage to the public space creation, while the direct reminder is almost hidden. Similar functionality can be found in a much smaller scale in the city of Rijeka in Croatia, where the memorial is a new pedestrian bridge connecting the historical urban center with the area of Delta, where a future urban park is planned.

The memorials integrated through streetscapes also become a part of everyday circulation. This is a specific category based on the analysis of context in Table 2, where each example out of the eight identified interventions creates different characteristics in terms of usage, approachability, connectivity, and walkability. In Calgary, Canada, along the Memorial Drive route, multiple contemporary streetscape upgrade interventions are located on the waterfront. Poppy Plaza, being one of those upgrades, is a project that redesigned the public space with urban stairs around the traffic bridge, which defines this point as an urban plaza.

Two examples are interventions with permanent signs to mark a specific location throughout urban streetscapes, creating a network in the cities that can hardly be missed. The first is the Sarajevo Roses design, as a network of more than 200 sites where shells exploded, killing citizens of Sarajevo during the war in the 1990s. The second example connects multiple cities as a network of Stumble Stones, which are commemorative plaques.

There are also memorials placed at a road crossings, where they are more difficult for pedestrians to reach, but in those cases, their architectural landmark value invites people to join and explore the area. Such examples are the Reunification Monument, Gedeon Mpondo in Yaounde, Cameroon and the National Holocaust Monument in Ottawa by Studio Libeskind, 2017. In the words of authors from studio Libeskind: “The Monument is an experience that combines architecture, art, landscape and scholarship in ways that create an-ever changing engagement with one of the darkest chapters of human history while conveying a powerful message of humanity’s enduring strength and survival.” [49].

Some memorials, although erected for a specific person or event, carry deeper and wider meanings, such as the Diana Memorial Fountain in Hyde Park, where the aim of the project assignment was to reflect Diana’s life through the medium of water, and the authors’ intention and answer to that is to engage a topographically adapted and modeled fountain that simulates the endless circle of life with running water. In the authors’ words: “The design expresses the concept of ‘Reaching out—letting in’, taken from the qualities of the Princess of Wales that were most loved; her inclusiveness and accessibility.” [50].

4.4. Memorials and Experience

Altogether, conceptualizing memorials in the form of experience refers to memorial sites characterized with the visitors’ use, movement, and involvement [51] by incorporating a sensory dimension into the memorial landscape [47], as already mentioned in the previous example of the memorial fountain in London. The sensory experience enables the visitors to create a living space and a feeling of familiarity, which creates a sense of place and belonging. Based on the sensory experience, memorial sites embody walkspaces through the movement experience and soundscapes through music, noise, and silence [8]. The involvement experience in enhancing memory is not only related to the process of remembrance, it also incorporates the psychological and social needs of society. The concept of experience allows visitors to find “comfort in remembrance and healing in reflection” [52] (p. 10). Furthermore, memorials in general share these characteristics with urban parks and landscape architecture projects, which makes them a type of cultural landscape [8].

How memorials provoke movement and engagement is evident from almost every example through different design tools. For example, a controlled or manipulated movement experience is present where we have entrances and paths, which can be either a horizontal or vertical connection. A designed curved path in the Gordon Lederer Memorial in Croatia leads to the sculpture marking the place of death by also telling the life story of the Croatian journalist who died while reporting on the war situation in Hrvatska Kostajnica. This presents horizontal manipulation of motion. The Vukovar Water Tower Memorial, also located in Croatia and referring to the same independence war from the 1990s, is an example of vertical movement manipulation, where the tower is the main attraction and a symbolic reminder of the tragedies but also of unity. It gains new purpose as a panoramic vista point and through telling a story along the ramping climb in the lifted main exhibition area to the observation deck on the roof.

Sensory and multisensory experiences characteristic of memorials create place by specific atmospheric sense. The memorial pavilion in Norway to all people prosecuted in witch trails (which peaked in the 17th c.) incorporates specific lights, sounds, and smells through the fire element, but also provokes the feeling of honor through silence in nature.

Interaction and activities as conceptualization of experience are present in the described memorial fountain in London, which can be interpreted as a form of playground in the urban park, but it is also a meeting place bench. The already-described Holocaust memorial plaza in Berlin has a similar effect, as it has added interpretation within the intended design of the place for deeper exploration. As such, playgrounds as an element can also be found in other park and plaza designs. For example, in the Vukovar water tower, on its ground level among the cafe area, there is a children’s playground, which is partially hidden so that the tower remains visually intact as much as possible.

Furthermore, there are examples of memorials which have grown out of and developed from the initiative actions which can be regarded as design ideas from communities. Recent examples are the COVID Wall Memorial in London, which is an urban surface covered with hand-painted hearts with massages to represent someone who was loved and lost too soon to COVID. These were painted by family members and friends during the pandemic initiative action in 2021. This project is a work in progress. A similar action is a wall in Beirut, but with more involvement of the artist (Brady Black), who drew 200 portraits for the wall memorial port as a reminder and reconciliation method for negligence that resulted in tragic deaths in the 2020 explosion.

The National COVID Wall Memorial in London is representative of two more tools in memorialization—inscriptions and digitalization.

4.5. Memorials and Digitalization

Digitalization as a tool for memorials is still an unexplored area, and it is, in general, used mostly as an exhibition and educative tool. The London mural of hearts is an example of how this tool could be used for memorials through digital website media. The website combines the possibility of virtual dedication and a soundscape of audio testimonies with the image of 150,837 hearts on the wall, which was scanned on 8 April 2021. The result is an interactive virtual wall map [44]. This form of memorialization suggests the importance and influence which this memorial has had for the community. Hence, it is an additional argument for making the successful action permanent, but also a way of preserving (art, intervention, status, or memory) when wishes and opinions change, something that was missing in the case of the memorial wall in the Beirut port.

Inscriptions are commonly found in memorials because of the need to have dedications honoring, listing, and, in general, creating an understanding of who, when, and why, which is why this notion is further explored in the paper.

4.6. Inscriptions within Memorials

Conceptualizing memorials in the form of inscription refers to memorial sites where the memory is inscribed into urban space [53]. According to dictionary definition, inscriptions comprise historical, religious, or other records cut, impressed, painted, or written on stone, brick, metal, or another hard surface. Commemorative inscriptions transmit communication through an imprint of meaning [54], but they are also symbolic forms open to interpretation. As such, the inscriptive process of commemoration represents a complex interplay between the author, the reader, and the inscription [54] (p. 32), revealing that the meaning is not only inherent to the inscription, it is inherent to the readers’ interpretations as well.

Numerous memorial walls (in Sarajevo for the market bombing, in London for COVID, in Washington DC for Vietnam veterans, in Ottawa for Canadian firefighters, in New Jersey, the double wall for the 9/11 attack, and in Warsaw, the Katyn Museum) use lists as a remembrance tool as well as a method for creating the recognizable memorial expression. The mentioned examples, such as the Stumble Stones commemorative plaques designed by Gunter Demning and Poppy Plaza in Calgary, invite readers to discover, question, and then understand and/or interpret the written message. The examples such as the Kornati Memorial to Firefighters, with crosses made from stone walls without mortar, or the Mexico City Memorial to Violence, with steel walls, invite visitors to participate creatively with their writings. In the description by Gaeta-Springall Arquitectos: “one of the most important parts of the project is the humanization and appropriation of the steel walls. Society is responsible for making the Memorial. The seventy metallic walls are spaces for people to write the name of their victim, and express their pain, anger, and longings” [55].

Manifestations and tourism are specific experiences which gather larger groups of people in a space.

4.7. Memorials and Manifestation

Conceptualizing memorials in the form of manifestation is defined through the process where the memorial landscape is constituted through a memorial event that becomes associated with the place and, subsequently, becomes a part of the memory of that place. Memorials can be conceptualized through certain commemorative manifestations, which actively convert open public spaces into memorials. These can be permanent, in the form of annual celebrations or processions with a specific location and date, or temporary, in the form of festivals [48] (p. 560). Regardless of whether the manifestation is permanent or temporary, it becomes linked with the place [48] and, as such, constitutes a place of memory [53] (p. 56).

Manifestations such as the Sarajevo Red line Project, with 11,541 empty red chairs arranged in 825 audience rows in Maršal Tito Street back in 2012, and the recent multimedia program The Siege of Sarajevo from 2022 are examples of one-time temporary events. There are numerous memorial parks and monuments erected in the post-war period from around the 1960s until the 1980s across the world in places which were under social and communist regimes such as Russia, China, or the ex-Yugoslavia region in the Balkans [38,39,40,41,42]. Some of them were erected as stages for annual commemorations. These monuments were forgotten and neglected for a certain period of time, as it is the case with the Partisan Memorial Cemetery in Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina, erected in 1960 with renovations in 2005 but still known as a place of constant vandalism and destructive behaviors (Figure 4). In recent years, they have started to attract visitors even in those conditions as a part of growing interest in dark tourism, defined as tourism involving travel to places historically associated with death and tragedy. The main attraction is their historical value.

4.8. Memorial Tourism

Conceptualizing memorials in the form of memorial tourism refers to memorial sites where spaces of memory become places of tourist and economic values [56]. The concept of memorial tourism originates from post-conflict sites. Its development was initiated after the First World War, by placing post-conflict sites and events in the context of tourism. A study, published by “Atout France”, the French tourism development agency, has shown that memorial sites attract more than 6 million visitors annually, making them economically valuable [56] (p. 52). This is capitalization of their historical values or heritage. As such, they can contribute to socioeconomic development and regeneration [57], but they can also provoke conflict, especially in war-affected areas.

Sites specifically oriented towards tourism are various museums and war camp sites. Genocide museums and memorials, such as the Jewish Museum in Berlin (designed by Daniel Libeskind in 2001) or the Katyn Museum in Warsaw (designed by BBGK Architects Jan Brzozowski, Konrad Grabowiecki, and Wojciech Kotecki in 2015), aim to educate but also to send a massage of warning through emotions by evoking the memories and visualizing the conditions or circumstances related to the tragic memory. Projects for renovations and regenerations of war camps and mass graves on in situ places of tragic collective memories have become like museums in provoking shock and reactions but also adding a contemporary function for the city, such as visitor centers or cemeteries (Kigali Genocide Memorial Center, planned by John McAslan + Partners in 2014; Esterwegen Memorial to mass killings by WES-Landscape Architecture in 2011; Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau developing since 1947; Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site; Riversaltes Camp Memorial by Rudy Ricciotti and Passelac and Roques built in 2015; Srebrenica Genocide Memorial Centre and Cemetery from 2002).

Additionally, cityscapes as cultural landscapes are popular destinations of cultural tourism. An example of this is the Cretto di Burri project in Gibellina in Italy as a land art intervention. Furthermore, Pompei and Herculaneum are archeological attractions and visitor areas which inform of visible traces of life but also remind about the ancient volcanic eruption. Even in Chernobyl, there are organized tours for visitors in the cityscape struck by the nuclear catastrophe in 1986. Currently, nature dominates, while memorialization with sculptures follows along the main road connections.

Many of these sites are still places of conflicting emotions, for which memorials are a platform for possible dialogue and discussion, and this notion is explored through the concept of contestation.

4.9. Memorials and Contestation

Conceptualizing memorials in the form of contestation refers to memorial sites that debate history and the meaning of the past through the landscape, so that the commemoration process becomes an arena of struggle over identity [53] (p. 51). This is best seen in post-conflict memorial sites, where memories are contested by identification with the participants who lost or won the conflict, leading to alternative ways of remembering through the continuity or break with the past [58] (p. 5). Due to this dual nature, memorials are not conceived as static systems. Instead, they are part of a dynamic process of contradiction over meaning, especially if they involve remembrance of trauma or violence.

The questions which were found to be the topics of open struggle with conflicting opinions and should, as such, be considered carefully are 1. the appropriate way to commemorate and remember the victims (Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, Sarajevo Roses, COVID Wall Memorial in London); 2. the appropriate place for memorial interventions (Empty Sky in New Jersey and Eisenhower Memorial in Washington DC); and 3. whom to dedicate the memorial to and how to resolve the conflict in the post-war period (genocide memorials).

4.10. Urban Landscape Memory

Conceptualizing memorials in the form of urban landscape memory refers to memorial sites which conserve traces of memory within the urban and natural landscape that have become permanent markers linking the past, the present, and the future. They are lasting visualizations of memory and silent reminders of the past, integrated within the ground of the urban and natural landscape. Direct urban memories are urban elements preserved within new urban fabric which continues to live, such as the Berlin Wall Memorial by Kohlhoff and Kohlhoff, built in 1998, with the rest of the wall parts dispersed throughout the world in an asymbolic way as the German people, the Jewish, and the Nazis moved and ran away from Germany. Similar, but in the sculptural scale, is the example of the Slave Market Memorial from 1998 designed by the sculptress Clara Sörnäs on the site of one of the world’s biggest slave markets.

Without any inscriptions, the symbolism of these memorial sites allows multiple narratives of history and multiple interpretations of memory to construct meaning [59], which can contribute to the rehabilitation and reconciliation process, especially in post-conflict sites. Peter Eisenmann, in his speech for the Holocaust Memorial inauguration, held in May 2005, explained how the openness of his design aimed to allow future generations to draw their own conclusion in terms of allowing them to think and not to direct them into what to think. The unbuilt project “The Road” from 1958, developed by Oskar Nikolai Hansen as team leader with Zofia Hansen, Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz, Edmund Kupiecki, Julian Pałka, and Lechosław Rosiński, had a similar idea of an open form for the international competition and an exhibition at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum. The concept envisioned a wide, diagonal road with conserved and preserved elements of the camp, with the surroundings left to the effects of time and overgrown by plants. Oscar Hansen calls it “a biological clock… It starts with life, passes through death, and then returns to another life. Life and death define one other within it.” [60]. Although it was the winning project, this concept violated the 1947 law on the inadmissibility of changes to the campgrounds and was therefore not realized.

4.11. Artistic Interventions in Memorials

Conceptualizing memorials in the form of art refers to memorial sites that enable permanence of memory through art form and the content of artistic design. All the analyzed examples are art forms in various scales, from sculptures and murals to architectural, urban, and landscape design as art forms. Themes in art express ideas and ideals of a society which comprise larger concepts related to religious beliefs, glorification, ideology and self-expression, beauty, war, history, and memory [61] (p. 561). After the Second Word War, the conventional figurative representation of memorialization became insufficient to comprehend the painful and unthinkable memory. In order to enable different interpretations of the past, memorial sites emerged in abstract and minimalistic art forms, allowing for openness of experience and involvement [52].

5. Discussion

5.1. (De)Linking as a Dualistic Conceptual Framework of Memorials

This research shows that (de)linking in memorials comprises a dualistic conceptual framework which enables linking with the memory and, at the same time, delinking from negative emotions. Based on the analysis of 78 memorials, the research has resulted in identifying the main forms of connection with past events through memorials and in defining design methods of memorialization which aim both to link or remind and to delink or heal the community.

Links or connections to traumatic events are here elaborated and categorized through (a) marking the locations and/or event data, (b) preserving the location and spatial proportions, and (c) symbolic representations; all in various scales and settings.

The (de)linking analysis of memorials has resulted in eleven concepts where the aim is to evoke memory by looking into the future of these places and communities, presented and conceptualized in the previous chapter in this order: post-disaster, post-conflict, urban landscape integration, experience, digitalization, inscription, manifestation, memorial tourism, contestation, urban landscape memory, and art. These eleven concepts are the main systematic contribution of this paper to the emerging globalized world where tragedies seem to be constant throughout history. These concepts are the basis for the theory of (de)linking through memorials as presented on the scheme in Figure 5. The scheme shows the terms from Table 1 organized in reference to the conceptual framework of delinking and linking within eleven forms of memorialization derived from the analysis of case studies in Table 2.

The concepts of art, experience, urban landscape integration, and inscriptions from the Framework were identified in numerous memorial examples analyzed for this study. Thus, these concepts can be considered as basic and necessary concepts in memorial projects. Furthermore, the post-disaster and post-conflict notions are very close. The comparison of memorials confirms that memorials are part of post-disaster planning strategies in the case of the aftermath of natural disasters. The post-conflict memorials are a wide and various group of interventions which make contestation a significant concept in memorial design as well. Digitalization, manifestation, and memorial tourism are concepts which are specific according to this research and they were only partially explored in this paper.

This introduced systematization of memorials brings to light two new insights which are further discussed: memorials as systems and cityscapes as memorials.

5.2. Memorials as Systems

Through the overview of the analyzed projects and their concepts, this research has discovered that memorials tend to form systems such as routes and networks. Eight examples from Table 2 are evaluated as parts of systems. In the table, this is denoted with a footnote (number 3) in the second column after the project title.

In different countries and cities, there are numerous parks with monuments which share similarities in their project scales and design ideas. Although this network was not planned as such, it nevertheless exists from the tourist and research points of view. Table 2 presents these systems as detected in ex-Yugoslavian countries, as well as in Germany and Russia. Berlin has three of these memorial parks: the Tiergarten Memorial in Berlin, designed by Mikhail Gorvits, 1945 (2 ha); the memorial and military cemetery in Treptower Park, architect Yakov Belopolsky, 1949 (8 ha); and the memorial in Schönholzer Heide in Pankow in situ of the work camp with a Soviet cemetery, 1949 (3 ha). Together with the Rear-front Memorial in Magnitogorsk and The Motherland Calls in Volgograd, the Warrior Liberator monument in Treptower Park in Berlin is recognized and evaluated as a part of a triptych.

On a regional and country scale, the analyzed example of the Steilneset Memorial, dedicated to 91 people found guilty of witchcraft and burnt at the intervention site, is a part of the wider network of National Norway Tourist Routes. This network is known as Norwegian Scenic Routes and consists of 18 selected roads connecting unique natural landscapes—fjords, coasts, mountains, and waterfalls—where interventions have added value and enabled resting stops and viewpoints, such as the Steilneset Memorial in Vardø, designed by the artist Louise Bourgeois and architect Peter Zumthor, opened in 2011. When memorials are part of planned systems with in situ characteristics, people can better understand the values of those memorials, which, in turn, makes them even more significant within the route systems in both natural and urban settings. In general, memorials as parts of large networks are small-scale interventions and transformations, and this enables people to accept them because the qualities of their setting prevail on a larger scale. A similar example is Bunker 599, which is a part of a network of 799 bunkers along the New Dutch Waterline, a military line of defense used from 1815 to 1940, which protected the cities of Muiden, Utrecht, Vreeswijk, and Gorinchem through intentional flooding. These routes are a new concept for the future of these areas, offered as an alternative or a stop from highways, with interventions which preserve the genus loci of the setting and, at the same tame, make the lost and forgotten historical layers and stories visible.

The Memorial Drive renovation project entitled “Landscape of Memory” refers to multiple interventions listed as a system in this research in the city of Calgary in Canada. Memorial Drive, formerly Sunnyside Boulevard, is a road along the Bow River originally designed based on the 1920s idea to honor Canadian war veterans and fallen local soldiers from the First World War by planting cottonwood trees as a “living memorial”. Since 2010, the city has been conducting a series of on-going studies and projects for extensions and upgrades of this valuable linear urban memory with the Stantec and Marc Boutin Architectural Collaborative (MBAC). “The Memorial Drive Landscape of Memory” is a 9.5 km long pathway parallel to Memorial Drive and the riverfront. The MBAC architectural office has already built pathway upgrades (2012), Calgary Soldiers Memorial (2012), Poppy Plaza (2013), and Parkdale Plaza (2015). Therefore, this is a riverfront promenade system from the Peace Bridge to Poppy Plaza. The designs are connected through a new visual identity, where concrete is the overall connecting basic material because of its durability, affordability, and flexibility in forming various shapes to create a set of memorials as an infrastructure system where: “new pathway armature is conceived of as a ‘kit of parts’ that can be adapted to suit a variety of experiential conditions without compromising the legibility of the overall system as a continuous infrastructure” [62].

The Sarajevo streetscape has a network of small-scale memorial interventions in places where the road was damaged in the last war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992–1995): the Sarajevo Roses Memorial (Figure 6). These memorials have unique (floral look) patterns formed by filling the gaps with red resin. They are in situ markers of places where people died due to intense shell impacts from the surrounding hillside during the Siege of Sarajevo. The memory is preserved as war residuals, while the impressive network of around 200 of them is scattered all around the city, creating a unique streetscape identity. Similarly, the Stumble Stones commemorative plaques connect streetscapes in multiple towns and countries.

In some cases, projects are also connected by authors who had multiple opportunities to work on memorial projects. MBAC were already mentioned in the Calgary example along the Calgary memorial route, and their other projects include memorial plazas and streetscapes. Following the Berlin Jewish Museum in 2001, Daniel Libeskind has designed other memorials and museums as well, such as the National Holocaust Monument in Ottawa (2017) and the Dutch Holocaust Memorial of Names in Amsterdam (2021). David Adjaye’s work was analyzed through the Cherry Groce Memorial Pavilion in London (2021), but his work includes multiple projects, several of which are planned to be built.

This research values and aims to acknowledge these systems as a method of planning memorials and not just designing them to achieve multiple benefits for communities. The types of contexts which are identified in this research within urban and natural settings offer a possibility for each intervention to be specific in its relation to the context from the place-making perspective, even if it is a part of a wider system with similar ideas. Furthermore, in this digital age, there are multiple possibilities of connections, and memorials as cultural sites are being connected through virtual forms and databases. Some examples are Kultura sjećanja/Culture of remembrance [63] and Gedenkstättenübersicht/Memorial Museums Overview database [64].

5.3. Cities and Memory/Cityscapes as Memorials

This research indicates that cities can also be read as memorials. In Table 2, under context, this was a category marked as “cityscape”. Good examples of this are lost cities where communities have a need to learn from the past and memorialize it. Gibelina in Italy is one of them, where a new city was established about 20 km from the historic city destroyed after the earthquake in the 20th century, and the land art allowed the lost city to be visible as a sculpture. Other examples of post-disaster lost cities are Pompei and Herculaneum, as archeological sites and cultural heritage, and Chernobyl, as an example of a post-conflict city.

The category of living cities which are memorials to post-conflict situations are those which are burdened with over-memorialization, such are Berlin, Kigali, Sarajevo, Vukovar, Nagasaki, and Warsaw (Figure 7). These cities need a model for recovery, healing, and memory in a way that brings hope, which can be directed and guided through the mentioned memorialization tools and methods such as memorial tourism, but they also need new urban functions, industries, and new systems of public places. The idea should be focused on creating a healthier environment for the future without repeating mistakes from the past.

This research suggests that cityscapes can be observed as a type of memorial. In that context, cityscapes are cities observed as landscapes, while the term urbanscape is used in this research to denote parts of a city as landscapes (a view of a characteristic part of a city), and therefore memorial examples are urbanscapes as such.

6. Conclusions

The aim of this research was to answer the following questions about memorial project interventions: 1. Which type of memory does the project intervention refer to and how? and 2. What methods and tools were used for artistic interpretation in addressing and achieving additional values and usages for future planning of these places? Accordingly, there are two main contributions of this article: (ad.1.) describing and understanding spatial context, intervention scale, and relation to past events that shape the conceptual framework of how memorials are designed; and (ad.2.) defining the dualistic concept of (de)linking with eleven forms of interventions in public places to achieve both linking and delinking as part of memorial design.

This research interprets memorials using a new research approach of (de)linking with the past as a dualistic concept of linking and delinking. Both linking and delinking with past events, situations, or persons were explored, through a theoretical review of terms and concepts connected to linking and delinking in general, as well as through analytical overview of 78 memorial examples. The overview of the examples observes how these interventions in memorial projects relate to their urban/natural settings, in which scale, and of which past memory they relate to. By analyzing these aspects, eleven interpretative methods were discovered in correlation with both the linking and delinking intention. These methods were further conceptualized through the (de)linking concept on the comparative memorial examples in the form of post-disaster, post-conflict, urban landscape integration, experience, digitalization, inscription, manifestation, memorial tourism, contestation, urban landscape memory, and art forms.

Therefore, the concept of (de)linking refers to detecting linking and delinking without separation, but rather by acknowledging that both links and delinks with the past in memorials are always achieved in two directions or meanings for communities. The linking direction with memory is found in relation to a location as recovery and remembrance, positioning with preservation and permanence of the site elements, as well as through symbols used in projects as signs of respect and recognition. Delinking from negative emotions and connotations of memories within the (de)linking concept is place development through new uses, education, adding meanings, networking, and planning changes such as renewal, regeneration, reconstruction, reaffirmation, for achieving resilience, healing, and reconciliation. Delinking does not aim at deleting or forgetting past events but is focused on reconciliation and healing the negative emotions from past events since the mentioned concepts and designs show a positive and better present with a possibility of an even better future. Therefore, both linking and delinking carry a sense of continuity—continuity with past memory and continuity into the future with lessons learned from the past.

The results of this research are architectural and planning insights which, together with adequate interdisciplinary knowledge of history, neuroscience, psychology, landscaping, collective memory, memorialization, and trauma, can help to reveal more adequate methods to research memory and placemaking.

“Livet må forstås baglæns, men må leves forlæns.”

“Life can only be understood backwards but must be lived forwards.”

Søren Kierkegaard, volume IV of the journals, written around 1843