Last year Frank Gehry won the design competition for the Eisenhower Memorial, which included six other firms (Perkins & Will, Krueck & Sexton, Rogers Marvel Architects, Moshe Safdie & Associates, Natoma Architects and PWP Landscape Architecture). After that, the firm was asked to produce three options for the members of the Eisenhower Memorial Commision to choose from, from which the final design was chosen a few days ago.
LA Time’s Culture Monster has more info about the project:
The design, which Gehry and his colleagues will flesh out in the months to come, combines a grove of oak trees, two parallel colonnades of limestone pillars and loosely piled limestone walls carved with sculptural reliefs — elements common to all three proposals — with a series of woven steel-mesh tapestries that will feature images of Eisenhower and his presidency. There is a gap in the colonnade as it runs along Independence, creating an opening framing views of the Capitol and also marking an informal pedestrian entry into the memorial site.
While the oak trees should provide plenty of shade — along with pockets of contemplative space — the tapestries will give much of the memorial the feeling of an expansive outdoor stage set. Gehry came up with the idea for the steel-mesh panels while exploring the tapestry collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where his firm has been working on an expansion.
More images after the break:
