Silent City -Tangshan Earthquake Memorial | Kjellgren Kaminsky Architecture

Landscapes and cities contain information layers. These layers can exist physically, they can be visible or invisible, they can be abstract like cartographic grids, or remembrances. For Tangshan the layer of the 1976 earthquake will always be present, in the collective memory of its inhabitants and through its physical remains. For the memorial park we propose a monument that is omnipresent throughout the whole park constituting one of its many layers. Juxtaposed to greenery, paths and daily life remembrance becomes a natural part of the park. The dichotomized relationship between grief and hope, black and white, past and future reoccurs throughout the project materialized in the relationship between the message stones, the lanterns and the two parts of the ruin......more