In the heart of London’s St James’s Park, where John Nash’s 200-year-old landscape has witnessed the rise and fall of empires, a new chapter is about to unfold. The site that has long served as the nation’s ceremonial backdrop will soon become home to something unprecedented: a memorial not just to a monarch, but to an entire era.
The winner of the competition to design Queen Elizabeth II’s memorial has been announced, and perhaps it was inevitable that it would be Norman Foster.
However, it was also clear that the memorial was intended to be a new national landmark that somehow encapsulated the queen and changed national values and identities during her long reign.
Almost inevitably, it is to be situated in a Grade-I listed setting in St James’s Park, London. This presented designers with the further challenge of how to sensitively respond to John Nash’s historic landscape design across a site that spans the breadth of the park.
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After initial expressions of interest were sifted, the five candidates shortlisted in February had to come up with a master plan that was emotionally resonant and sustainable.
It also had to be compatible with the existing use of this extensive site, not least as a thoroughfare presenting vistas of Buckingham Palace and Whitehall. This memorial therefore involved much more than the simple statues of the Queen’s father and grandfather that came before it.
Even the memorial to Queen Victoria, undoubtedly the most commemorated woman in British history, is modest in scale compared to this new project.
The Queen Elizabeth II memorial is clearly intended to be very different from Victoria’s imperial confection. The brief for the design specified that it had to be immediately comprehensible to peoples of all races and religions, respect the park’s wildlife, be easy to maintain and be reasonably vandal proof. Above all, the proposal had to evoke the late queen’s qualities and “tell the story of her long reign through integrated design, landscaping and placemaking”.
The process was therefore an exercise in landscape architecture, rather than producing an artwork.
The queen herself had considerable familiarity with architecture. During her reign, she opened 122 buildings in London alone, as well as iconic buildings around the world, such as Sydney Opera House.
The queen described the latter as “a splendid achievement of engineering and architecture”. Her similar enthusiasm when opening the Barbican in London suggests that her architectural tastes were less traditional than her eldest son’s.
Yet there was no dominant school of architecture among the buildings she opened, nor a New Elizabethan style that defined her reign. It would be impossible to evoke the eclectic architecture range of her reign without pastiche.
However, if there was no defining architecture, there arguably was a defining architect – the nonagenarian Sir Norman Foster. A working-class lad from Manchester who built a globally renowned architectural brand, his architectural career, which commenced in 1956, nearly coincides with the queen’s reign.
During that reign, many of the significant buildings she opened, such as Stansted Airport, were designed by Foster. In his career, he has won every major architectural award and produced major landmark buildings all over the world. In consequence, he has been described as the “perfect architect for his era”.
With all due respect to the acclaimed teams of designers he was competing with, it therefore seems appropriate that his firm, Foster + Partners, should have been chosen to evoke the reign of a monarch during which his buildings featured so prominently.
A ‘unifying force’
To win the bid, Foster + Partners had to assemble a multidisciplinary team, including the British artist Yinka Shonibare. Their proposal was felt to address many of the dualities of the Queen’s reign: tradition and modernity, public duty and private faith and the relationship between the UK and the Commonwealth that was always dear to Elizabeth II’s heart.
To express these dualities, their master plan provided for two gates and two gardens, united by a path and a new translucent bridge over the park’s lake. As Foster reflected, this was intended to convey the queen’s role “as a unifying force”.
Probably one factor that worked in their favour was the significance given to the Duke of Edinburgh. The firm’s suggestion of a statue of the royal couple together is unusual. The statues of the queen’s parents, in contrast, are separate if adjacent on a staircase on the north side of The Mall facing the park where their daughter’s memorial will appear. This plan brings her back together with the beloved husband she so missed after his death in 2021. It’s a move that the queen would no doubt have thoroughly approved.
The design concept will, of course, be refined. The architectural renders at present can only give a glimpse of what the memorial landscape will look like in practice, let alone convey the ambience it seeks to evoke. Such details will need to be developed before the designs are submitted for planning permission.
Nevertheless, it does seem appropriate that, for an era that defies architectural categorisation it should reflect the vision of the man who, more than any other, has been the architect of the age.
Pippa Catterall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
