Bondi Memorial
Bondi Memorial Project
Location
Gamma Gamma Country
Marks Park,
Tamarama NSW
For
Competition
Design Team
Jane Irwin Landscape Architecture
McGregor Westlake Architecture
Competitions
The core purpose of this art work is to acknowledge the victims and survivors of an epidemic of homophobic and transphobic violence estimated to have claimed the lives of more than 40 gay men and transgender women across NSW between 1970 and 2000.
The concept integrates art and landscape, whereby the elements of the “artwork” and the landscaped setting*, are indelibly linked, to make a place in Marks Park for contemplation, healing and commemoration.
Here, the setting is less axial but still dominated by landscape, that of Marks Park itself, the ocean and sky.
The memorial remembers a series of crimes that are in fact shockingly violent, in both their motive and action. We want this memorial to be a spatial experience and visual poem to bear witness to this sad and moving history.
First sighted as a series of jagged columns, reaching up above the scrub, their profile forming a discordant silhouette, the columns signal and mark the place of the memorial. Upon approach a side path slips through the grass spurs, inviting entry into the space - a simple sandstone clearing within the scrub and grass of the park landscape. A long, low horizontal wall provides a defining edge, leading the passer-by through the copse of columns, into the space of the place.
The clear horizon ocean view is underlined by the long low wall. The columns block and break the horizon. The wall wraps the space terminating in a small promontory that angles to an untrammelled view of the vast space of the ocean, inviting individual contemplation of the sublime and infinite horizon, with its intimation of human vulnerability, and loss. This eastern view catches the morning sun, offering light and the hope implicit in every sunrise.
The vast landscape and the history of this place is condensed for a moment into this intimate space.
Turning finally, from this view a seemingly happenstance rainbow is revealed, each colour encapsulated within the cloak of their corten envelope. The colours capture the eastern light, the discordant columns are married as a unified flag for hope, unity and enduring humanity.
This place also offers space for community to gather, to remember and to heal – the gentle slopes and integrated stone benches focussed on the central space. This little amphitheatre sits within the shape and character of the landscape, accommodating gathering when needed, without seeming lonely or underused when unoccupied.
