The objective for our penultimate undergraduate studio was to explore the immaterial aspects of sacred spaces. To pursue this goal, we were tasked to select one of two sites located adjacent to Sloan's Lake in Denver, CO.
The design of Memoriam is a response to an existing cultural artifact - a small Catholic chapel which was originally part of the St. Anthony's Hospital previously located on the site. The chapel now sits with a multi-story new development towering over it directly adjacent.
Inspiried by the work of Salvador Dali, my concept was to use the archetypal facade of the chapel as a reference point and ‘disintegrate’ its form through different iterations which symbolize the dilution of the importance of the memory of the chapel in the cultural fabric of the neighborhood. The church serves as a metaphor for memory, generally. The iterations, and the meandering path which joins them together, evoke and mimic the fleeting nature of our ability to hold on to a memory.
