CONSTELLATION GARDEN REMEMBRANCE MEMORIAL

A healing space that makes remembrance visible, strengthens the community, acknowledges the magnitude of loss, and embraces a hopeful future.

Charlotte, North Carolina

18,000 SF

2021-2023

On April 30th, 2019, Reed Parlier and Riley Howell lost their lives, four students were wounded, and classmates, families, friends, and an entire community were forever changed by a school shooting at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Remembrance is an act, a ritual, and an engagement with the past. Grounded by themes of illumination and healing, the Constellation Garden Remembrance Memorial aims to make remembrance visible and be held in the light, to strengthen the community through human connection, to acknowledge the magnitude of loss, and to embrace an optimistic and a hopeful future.

As a memorial, the question of how to materialize meaning and memory led design thinking. The sculpture represents both the vast emptiness of the night sky, and simultaneously the feeling of being connected and together. Designed to heighten the senses, the sculpture is at once delicate, strong, reflective, and ephemeral. The landscape holds the sculpture carefully and softly within it, integrating additional opportunities for seating for study, contemplation, and reflection.

The memorial includes an interactive sculpture made of large steel arcs grounded with six pillars, one to represent each person killed and wounded. The crisscrossing arcs rise 25’ above a granite plaza, creating a cavernous ceiling of arcs that hovers above a circular gathering space embraced by planted landforms and an arc of trees and gardens.
Reed and Riley’s pillars are wrapped with commemorative bands that, when touched, send a kinetic wave of increased light intensity through the constellation above, signifying the network of those affected by gun violence. Light ripples quietly and slowly across the sculpture, representing the ever-present constellation of trauma, pain, and loss caused by gun violence.