Dandenong Community Memorial Park

The Dandenong Community Memorial does not speak of monuments, objects and authoritarian proscription but of spaces, interrelationships, democratic openness and inclusiveness. That is, the Dandenong Community Memorial Park is conceived as a Public Space, but a particular configuration of public space: one which facilitates our human need to remember, commemorate, affirm and celebrate life and the gifting of life for others. Such a Memorial place enables us to orient ourselves for others as well as within the passage of time. Such a place provides a range of spatial experience and interaction and is characterised by a richness and diversity of interpretive engagement.

The Memorial design is conceived as being formed by and giving form to a geometry of encounter. The Memorial is a spatial design which facilitates gathering, relating and separating. This creation and orchestration of spaces, spatial sequences and human interaction is achieved through the institution of a three dimensional matrix. This matrix - formed by overlaying the four grids systems apparent in the layout of Dandenong City - grounds the project in the particularities of site and its urban context, reconfigures the ground plane into a series of Memorial Terraces, arrays and orients a Memorial Grove, establishes the focal point of the Memorial Clearing, generates design detailing, and produces a dramatic unfolding of visual experiences.