Memorial Park

The Memory Park is dedicated to the 30 victims of the earthquake that struck Molise on 31th October 2002 (a teacher and 27 children died in the collapse of the primary school 'Francesco Jovine' , while two women died at home). The park is located on the site where the school was, in the center of the town, now almost totally rebuilt after the earthquake. The project is a work where memory and matter try to generate and renew personal and social values; the use of the park is immersive. - 1000 unusual plants ('juncus') of increasing high, lighted up at the top, mark 15 paths (30 'faces') of individual meditation, crossing parallel the Park. The Park's central area, where lie the ruins of the school, is crystallized and sanctified for the memory, breaking the rows and expressing the unbridgeable gap in the San Giuliano's community History. 'Trees sway in the wind. Trees are supple and pliant. The yield softly, letting the wind pass through. They do not fight the wind. When the wind dies down they regain their original shape. This is not so with things people make. They are always fighting. Buildings bridges and towers. They stand up against the wind, hard, strong, and manly. And sometimes they collapse.' (Fiber Wave - Makoto Watanabe) & - 30 memorial disks, distinctive sepulchral signs, visitors happen to come across the meditation paths throughout the park. The Human Background of each 'surviving victim' will help every disk to become private symbols of communion with the 'prematurely dead victims'.

The presence of old and new elements together will lead to a necessary psychological journey since who outlasts his own children and dear needs to reknow and rebuild the irreplaceable relationship with them into the Immemorial Time of Life , by searching in the history of the 'To Have Been' the history of the 'To Be Able to Be the Future'. A new place thus was born, a place with several contemporary meanings depending on who is coming in. It is a public place for the passenger, a place of abstract commemoration for tourist, but it becomes a place with a high spiritual and memorial value for people who have been involved in that tragedy and who have been asked to testify their own private sorrow.

The site, of a 5000 sm surface, is the urban gap left by the demolition of the collapsed school. The project seeks to accommodate the topography of the places, in order to encourage the longitudinal use of the Park (upstream vs downstream). The 1000 Led lamps 'Juncus-shaped' (0.01 watt, corresponding totally to one lamp of 100 watt) illuminate the Park by night and day. A green ring of plants and trees around the juncus forest, balances the flooring space of the park.