the Wreckage of History
Within Rock Creek Park the stones of the old capitol building are resting, quietly forgotten, between the trees. The stones are a prophecy and a hope that our monuments can be taken down and lost to memory. What follows is a proposal for the deconstruction of monuments that aught never have been built, but who's creation holds a lesson - that history creates a trail of wreckage for the present to clear and repurpose to its own use.
This stone workshop is itself constructed from the materials it's inhabitants work to deconstruct; the stones and statues of monuments that have lost the public's favor. But should we be able to hide from our history? This project proposes a method to disarm monuments through deconstruction, but to keep them present as a reminder to who we have been and may be.
Traces Through Shrouds
The stone shop's northern facade of statues entombed behind a veil of thinly cut translucent stones removes them from prominence, but maintains their trace. This is the strategy of the first decommissioned monument, Robert E. Lee's from Charlottesville, Virginia.
The bronze statue is buried, but water is allowed to enter the tomb passover the statue and stain it's former podium by way of a stone gutter that drains from a culvert embedded in a gully of rock creek.
