An art historian and an architect from Northeastern University in London look at the pros and cons of the five shortlisted concepts.
LONDON — How best to honor a monarch who served for 70 years? It is the question Britain is grappling with since the death of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022.
A short list has been put together of five designs that are vying to be the national memorial to the country’s longest-reigning sovereign, who was 96 when she died. The winning project is set to be constructed across a section of St James’ Park, situated near Buckingham Palace in central London.
The U.K. government is inviting the public to have a say on the designs, and two experts who are preparing submissions include Northeastern University’s Kate Grandjouan, an associate professor of art history, and Vasilena Vassilev, assistant professor of architecture.
All the concepts include a bridge — ranging from a canopied lily pad arrangement to a translucent-style effect — over the park’s lake. Three of the designs include a statue of the late queen riding on horseback, reflecting her love of equestrianism, while another uses a statue of an English oak tree to symbolize her reign. The fifth finalist hopes to mark seven themes of her life, one for each decade spent on the throne, across two interwoven bridges.
The propositions, says Grandjouan, follow more modern ideas for remembering a former leader.
“I think we’ve grown into a new type of public memorial,” she says. “The classic way of memorializing was a monument or a sculpture put in places like Westminster Abbey or St Paul’s Cathedral, or they were erected in squares and places where people could gather. The whole process of memorialization is a really old one — and that was traditionally a sculptural concept.”
Grandjouan and Vassilev, who both teach on the university’s London campus, jointly argue that the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., completed in 1982, changed the way public memorials were considered.
“The Vietnam memorial was such a turning point,” says Vassilev, “because at that point you were used to seeing a lot of big commemorative sculptures and statues that were literal objects.
“And then Maya Lin, who was a student of architecture and just 21 years old at the time, entered the competition for the Vietnam memorial with just this incredible drawing of a kind of fissure in the landscape. The memorial itself is really quite groundbreaking, not just because it’s experiential and it creates a space, but how she manipulated and really thought about the materials and what kinds of responses they would elicit.”
Lin’s memorial in Constitution Gardens is made of two reflective black granite walls engraved with the names of those U.S. service members who died or were lost during the Vietnam War between 1955 and 1975, with an undulating footpath between them.
The fact that the walls are reflective adds to its poignance, Vassilev says. “When you’re looking at it, you’re seeing yourself,” she continues. “So in a way, it’s a tribute to those who died and also a tribute to those who they died for — it is confrontational in that sense. It is very challenging, deeply poetic and incredibly powerful. You see people just break down when they’re there.”
Interpretive monuments and installations have become far more widespread as a result of Lin’s work, with Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe — a purposefully unnerving block-formation composition that opened in 2005 — appearing in most must-see tourism guides when visiting the German city.
Not every symbolic memorial has worked in practice, however. Grandjouan says the U.K. public will likely be keen to avoid repeating the issues that led to the Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain in Hyde Park in London, which cost £3.4 million ($6.7 million) to construct, needing to be closed and reworked only a month after opening in July 2004.
The water feature was intended to be walked through to allow for an immersive experience for visitors but fences had to be installed only weeks following its unveiling due to three people being hospitalized after slipping. “You couldn’t walk on it and it became the opposite of what they wanted,” recalls Grandjouan. “And then they had to drain it because it was flooding everywhere, so it was an absolute nightmare. It became rather underwhelming as a result.”
Elizabeth II’s memorial will come with an even heftier price tag — between £23m and £46m ($30.5 million to $61 million), depending on the selected design — so Granjouan says there will be a desire to pick something that both meets the project’s set criteria of being sustainable while also being achievable.
That could make some of the submissions less favorable than others, she points out. Garden designer Tom Stuart-Smith, in partnership with Jamie Fobert Architects, has proposed installing a bronze tree that is an “exact cast of an awe-inspiring oak” from Windsor, one of the queen’s favored homes and her namesake, to represent her strength and endurance.
“The oak symbolism for Britain,” says Granjouan, “would fit with national pride, national identity and national storytelling really well. But, if this is going to be an exact cast, you do wonder how this is going to be maintained with all these little leaves.”
A proposition for a lily pad bridge, with a statute of the queen on horseback in the centre, put forward by designer Thomas Heatherwick’s studio — responsible for the Vessel viewing structure in Hudson Yards, New York — is “bombastic,” Granjouan says, and the “complete opposite” of the Queen’s “subtle and sensitive” nature. Vassileva says Heatherwick is known for being “innovative” but that his critics have accused him of being “somewhat ostentatious and wasteful in terms of material and energy.”
Grandjouan leans toward the simpler schemes, such as that put forward by J&L Gibbons architecture firm, with its plan for an understated bridge, subtle re-landscaping and a statue of the queen on a horse, with its base left rough to reflect the natural rock. “It really is a beautiful, ecological, environmentally respectful and sustainable project,” she says.
Vassileva, too, says she favors the designs that integrate themselves into the legally protected park, praising the Stuart-Smith oak tree cast for its powerful sculpture and the proposal, led by architecture group WilkinsonEyre, for two “immersive” intertwining bridges, with one rising over the other.
Following the public consultation, a panel of experts is set to announce the winner next year. But there is probably one person who knows best which concept Britain’s long-serving queen would have preferred.
“I would be curious to hear what King Charles would think of these, as to which one his mother would have appreciated,” says Vassileva. “Since he is incredibly dedicated to sustainability, I would imagine the ones that pay a bit more attention to the local ecology and a traditional design might be something that he might favor.”