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In Memento Mori. How will we remember the dead from the Covid-19 Pandemic?
“Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague
The architecture firm Gómez Platero is leading a $1.5 million project to create a monument to the victims of COVID-19 — the world’s first large-scale memorial to those lost in a pandemic — on the shores of Montevideo, under the direction of Uruguay’s president, Luis Lacalle Pou.
This dynamic monument will take the form of a massive circular structure that is nearly 130 feet in diameter. The circular platform is expected to welcome up to 300 visitors at a time and contain an open void at its center, which will look down toward the ocean below. It is a worthy attempt to remember those who have died — a place to comtemplate those who have perished and the enormity of their loss for a family, for a country and for the world. A place also, to remind us all, of the connection between the power of Nature and the conditionality of Humanity. It is bordering on the sublime.
In London a memorial garden is planned for the city’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic…
