Memorials as Spaces of Engagement: Design, Use and Meaning

by Quentin Stevens

They create spaces people can enter and move through, and they support opportunities for a variety of actions, many of which generate sensory experiences beyond the visual.

the transition from free-standing “statue monuments” to “spatial” ones.

more frequent tendency to commemorate darker pasts and to recognize individual sacrifice and victimhood through formal, professionally designed and constructed memorials and also through informal ones—which people make themselves with and without coordination or direction.

“spontaneous shrines” (Santino 2004). By 1997, the practice had become well enough known to help fuel the worldwide

These informal, unofficial memorials invite people’s hands-on participation in an intimate way.