The Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial, which opened to the public in August, will be officially dedicated by President Obama on October 16, 2011 in Washington, DC. ROMA Design Group was selected to design the memorial in 2000, after winning an international design competition from a field of nearly 1,000 design teams. The memorial design was a team effort within the ROMA office.
The MLK Memorial occupies a four-acre site on the Tidal Basin on axis with the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials. The design strengthens the relationship between the King, Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials and the evolving message of democracy, from the Declaration of Independence to the Gettysburg Address to Dr. King’s Civil Rights Speech delivered on the steps of the nearby Lincoln Memorial in 1963. Visitors enter the memorial through the “Mountain of Despair” and approach the “Stone of Hope” upon which the figure of Dr. King appears adjacent to the Tidal Basin, calling forth imagery from the “I have a dream” speech “out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.” The memorial is intended to express Dr. King’s message of human rights and civil liberty and his legacy in broadening the meaning of democracy in America. It is designed in the environmental tradition of the Vietnam War and the FDR Memorials, and utilizes natural elements, rather than a single monument or commemorative building, to evoke the kind of emotional response that Dr. King conveyed in his poetic use of language and reference to the American landscape.
ROMA Design Group is a San Francisco architecture, landscape architecture and urban design firm that has established an international reputation for the design of artful, socially engaged public spaces. The firm has designed such notable projects as the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, the plazas, promenades and piers on the Mid-Embarcadero waterfront in San Francisco, and the park system at the mixed-use community at decommissioned Mueller airport in Austin, Texas. Recent works include a new building wing at San Francisco‘s Drew School that features a vertical garden and living roof; a new bicycle/pedestrian bridge connecting the Austin, Texas city center to the Lance Armstrong Bikeway and Lady Bird Lake; an expansion and modernization of the BART station in Union City; and the first ferry terminal serving the new Water Emergency Transportation Authority in South San Francisco.
For additional information on the MLK memorial, Bonnie Fisher, Boris Dramov or ROMA Design Group please contact…
Contact: Dana Dramov
Josh Goldfarb Inc.
415-531-2290
dana@joshgoldfarbinc.com
SOURCE ROMA Design Group
Web Site: http://roma.com
