Given the task to educate and change a negative context of confederate monuments throughout the nation, our group was assigned the Robert E. Lee statue in Market Street Park. This park is rarely used by the public. In 2017, during a peaceful rally, a car was driven into a crowd of people, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others. While the state government covered the statue with a black tarp as a solution, our group decided to change the context of the location to be a learning experience and a memorial pavilion for Heyer and those injured. We sunk the 26 foot tall statue into a pool of water. This brought the height to about 10 feet out of water making the statue less daunting. The pavilion being taller than the statue shifts the importance to no longer be Robert E. Lee. The pavilion has two walls, one is solid and the other is a partially opaque glass wall. As visitors move through the newly designed park, the viewers see the statue in different ways; constantly changing the perspective. Our goal was to take a negative, unused space and create a peaceful and inclusive place to learn about the past.
