SESSIONS B5-A Elevating Memory and Light in the Landscape: The UNC Charlotte Constellation Garden Remembrance Memorial
On April 30, 2019, a tragic shooting occurred at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte campus in Kennedy Hall. Two students were killed and four were wounded. To mark this tragic event and to honor those impacted, the University released a national request for qualifications from design teams to create a commemorative space integrating art and landscape in December 2020. Out of 36 entries, the Constellation Garden proposed by the team of TEN x TEN, Hypersonic, and Susan Hatchell Landscape Architecture, PLLC was selected. On April 28, 2023, as part of UNC Charlotte’s Day of Remembrance, the memorial was dedicated with favorable public response. The Memorial honors the lives of those lost and acknowledges the enormous tragedy that occurred while creating a space that can evolve, teach, and heal. “Elevating Memory and Light in the Landscape” is a panel discussion that explores the process undertaken by the Constellation Garden Remembrance Memorial design team from early sketches through final construction. The panelists discuss steps taken to balance the grief, pain, and trauma of a horrific event with the design and construction of an uplifting place of remembrance, honor, and healing. The interactive and uplifting structure elevates remembrance of the event while encouraging connection between visitors to the site. Because time changes campus demographics, the Memorial was also designed to serve as a quiet, shady garden for solitude, gathering, and contemplation by faculty, staff, and students.
Learning Objectives:
Effective ways to add meaning to the landscape to create a healing space
How to work through a difficult and sensitive subject with various stakeholders
How a diverse team of landscape architects, artists, lighting designers, engineers, and fabricators navigated completing this complex and sensitive project
Panel discussion
Susan Hatchell
Susan is President of Susan Hatchell Landscape Architecture, PLLC with offices in Raleigh and Wilmington. SHLA is a woman-owned business dedicated to the design of public spaces such as campus and urban plazas and walkways, parks and greenway facilities, streetscapes, and multi-modal transit facilities. Susan served as the National President of the American Society of Landscape Architects in 2012, where she promoted public relations and the advancement of women and minorities. Susan has been an invited speaker, juror, and guest for numerous ASLA Chapters across the United States as well as at allied professional conferences. Elected to Fellow of the ASLA in 2001, she has been involved in dozens of ASLA committees and initiatives over the years. Susan was honored to receive the prestigious ASLA President’s Medal in 2020. Susan obtained a Master’s Degree in Landscape Architecture from NC State University where she also taught as an adjunct professor.
Maura Rockcastle
Maura Rockcastle has extensive experience leading large scale public projects and navigating complex and culturally sensitive processes. With a background in printmaking and sculpture, Maura balances a rigorous approach to leadership, project implementation, and design excellence with a conceptual sensibility rooted in process. In 2015 she co-founded TEN x TEN to build a practice committed to horizontal co-authorship, transparency, and curiosity. Maura’s professional experience is focused on cultural, institutional, and public realm projects. Recognized as a national leader in conversations of design process, adaptive reuse, and culturally significant landscapes, her projects have received national awards for design excellence, innovation, and preservation. Maura has taught design studios at multiple universities and currently teaches in the Architecture and Landscape Departments at the University of Minnesota College of Design. She holds a BFA in sculpture and printmaking from Cornell University and an MLA from the University of Pennsylvania.
Bill Washabaugh
Bill Washabaugh uses art, science, and technology to explore the world around - and within us. He is the founder and creative director of Hypersonic Art & Design, an art studio that creates new media sculptures and interactive environments. Bill and the Hypersonic team are passionate about creating site specific physical works that engage people with their environment and their community, using technology and data to create beautiful new works of art. In his past lives Bill has worn many different hats including that of aerospace engineer, canoe builder, touring musician, and vagabond traveler. He has designed airplanes, kitchen tools, construction machines, humanoid robots, baby bassinets, and many large and small artworks. Bill has degrees in aerospace engineering and French literature, and has been a guest lecturer at NJIT, San Jose State University, and Parsons the New School.