Haotian Ma

Supervisor: Dr Siqing Chen

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Redefine the Memorial

As the most significant global event in 2020, COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant economic and social disruptions and a high death rate that still persist today. Wuhan, as one of the most impacted cities in China, built two temporary hospitals (LEISHENSHAN &HUOSHENSHAN) that made great contributions to mitigate the pandemic’s effects. The thesis propose the memorialization of the events, posing the question: How can memorial landscape deeply stimulate humans’ experience to inspire the visitor to reflect and meditate?

Applying Andrea Giunta’s ‘anonymity design theories’, this thesis interrogates the necessity of the immanent sign of traditional memorial landscape design. Eschewing standard monumental memorial making, the thesis focus on applies anonymity landscape memorial design to not only subconsciously impact and strengthen humans’ experience and memory but also inspiring to form their own thoughts. The experimental site is the five hectares HUOSHENSHAN temporary hospital, that will be abandoned and replaced by open green space in the future plan.

Through applying Giunta’s principles, this project creates an open-ended process to memorize COVID-19 event in four different stages (break-out, lockdown, reopen & ongoing, and next episode) that allows dynamic and fluid remembering experience in landscape and incites meditation of life and death, devastation and salvation, human and pandemic, and new city lifestyle.