NATIONAL PEACE GARDEN DESIGN COMPETITION
Location: Haines Point Park, Washington, D.C., USA  Project Team:  Rick Phillips, AICP, RA (lead) with Lester Innoye, ASLA, Honolulu, Hawaii.  Date: 1989.
Description: The competition brief called for innovative ideas for the ongoing perpetuation of world peace. Across the river from Haines Point is Arlington National Cemetery. In respect of this hallowed context, patterns and rituals of the military cemetery, which commemorate the sacrifices of war, are transmuted to celebrate the possibilities of peace. The Peace Garden is conceived as an orchard which, over time, populates a surveyed grid of plots. Two rituals underpin the Peace Garden: the Ceremony of Planting and the Ritual of Tending. A tree is planted to witness an event associated with peace: a treaty, the end of a conflict, the death of a peacemaker, award of a Nobel Peace Prize, a milestone reached in the maintenance of peace. As peace is a process, not an outcome, the sponsors of a tree are enjoined to tend their tree in perpetuity.
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