Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Laurence A. Clement / Research suggests that Native Americans, Chicanos, and African Americans are groups underrepresented in the North American memorial landscape. The fluid nature of a group and individual’s identity (and the memory that shapes it) contributes to the underrepresentation in commemoration and memorials. As communities and the associated identities continue to blend and overlap moments of positive cultural exchange can take place, but at times the outcomes are in the realm of contention and conflict. The collaborative nature of landscape architecture together with the profession’s ability to understand and interpret complex systems and narratives can fully engage and bring form to the morally imaginative, creative act of peacebuilding. The concept of shifting and variant meaning led to this study that considered the question- How might memorials be designed as reconciliatory agents in cultural landscapes with conflicting histories? This study engaged the concept of memory and identity with Oglala Lakota, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, regarding the tragedy of Wounded Knee, through adapted ethnographic approaches in interviewing, site visits, extensive literature review, mapping and design inquiry. The design inquiry responds to social, economic, and ecological narratives to inform the design of the reconciliatory-minded memorial. The initial premise of the project was situated in the understanding that events with contested meaning are difficult to memorialize because there are so many differing voices; irreconcilable in the built form. While that is true in some contexts, initial findings suggests these groups are underrepresented because it is difficult to memorialize that which is a contemporary social justice or inter-demographic issue. In light of this and further research, the author believes that memorials seeking to honor demographics or events that directly affect contemporary groups might be contextually more appropriate, and act as mediators, if they focus forward rather than solely and solemnly reflect the past. Conceptual sketches conclude this study, offering possibilities for design expression, which might be realized with community participation.

Many war memorials today face loss of relevant meaning to the members of their community over time, an inability to adapt to evolving historical perspectives, and a lack of ability to engage visitors in a deep and authentic way of creating meaning and understanding. New war memorials should provide opportunities for visitors to engage with them in an active, conscious, and dynamic relationship with the built site. Encouraging such a connection facilitates deep and authentic meaning making that continues beyond the site visit, and that allows the memorial's form to evolve over time in response to visitor interaction. The constructivist model for war memorial design incorporates ten strategies, and the Active Physical Interaction strategy in particular, that allow designers to create places that encourage visitors to have personalized interaction. These strategies are built on the constructivist philosophy that explains how individuals and groups of people understand the non-objective world through experience. This position was tested through the design of a Dutch World War Two memorial at Warm Hearth Village in Blacksburg, Virginia. This memorial's main features include community garden beds for cultivation by the Village's elderly residents. The concept of sharp contrast reflected in three distinct areas of the memorial recall the oppression under five-years of Nazi occupation, the celebration of liberation in 1945, and the efforts of Allied and Resistance fighters in making this liberation possible. / Master of Landscape Architecture

Bearing witness to tragedy, the aftermath of genocide often resides quite evidently within the landscape. A potent container of memories and representation, the landscape provides both a symbolic role in which to honour the victims and give survivors a place to mourn and remember, but is also often infused with the tensions of post-genocide life. The memoryscapes of the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides illustrate these contested concerns explicitly. The case study sites investigated in this study - the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and the Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre in Cambodia, and the Kigali Memorial Centre in Rwanda - each express today (consciously or unconsciously) design strategies that engage the Euro-Western visitor. Termed Euro-Western ‘cues to connect’, encountered and existential phenomenological data is analysed in relation to design interpretation and the affective cognition of meaning. Finally, considered in relation to Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, post genocide memorialisation is analysed in its ability to connect through time and culture - through its ability to transpose interpretations and evolve as the needs of society change.