World Memorial to the Pandemic | Gómez Platero

The global impact of this pandemic has revealed a new map of the world. 

This new reality has conditioned our lifestyles, habits and the way we relate to each other. In this process, innumerable uncertainties arise with regard to the future. All activities and disciplines of knowledge are reformulating themselves to provide a response to this new crisis. 

As architects, we have assumed a commitment to conceive of and build a physical testimony to this singular collective juncture: a World Memorial to the Pandemic. 

A device, between monument and public space, capable of activating the senses and recreating bridges between the experience of the place and individual memory, which gives us back a transformative image of the world. 

It is located towards the edge, where nature and artifice meet, and the imposing scale of the maritime landscape dramatizes this experience. 

Understanding and interpreting our relationship with dynamic nature, subordinated to its changes, will serve as a permanent reminder of our place in the world. 

The Memorial will be an object of simple and compelling form, that disappears as a result of changing climatic conditions, melting into the horizon. 

The simplicity of its form, created in a single, precise stroke, reinforces its silent and timeless power of expression. Sitting respectfully on the site, with minimal environmental impact, it is immersed in the nature of the place. 

The circular geometry sums up the concept of unity and community. It takes shape as a concave sheet with which the architecture offers a precise reference point that reveals the constant variation of the natural landscape, a scale for measuring the strength of the sea, a place of shelter and exposure to the wind. 

The form is only interrupted by the cleft at the entrance to the place, the breach or rupture that reminds us of a singular event, a global phenomenon.

Man is not the center; the eye of this space is occupied by a void where nature in its pure state emerges, reminding us of its omnipresence and of our fragile condition. 

A multi-sensorial space in which perceptions will build a universe of meanings and associations, supported by the contrast between the object’s refined materials and the rugged texture of its surroundings. The experience of immersion in the proposed space seeks to build an atmosphere that amplifies the senses, an instrument of evocation. 

Conceived as a space for reflection, it creates a destination to be explored, a meaningful expansion of public space that will adopt the various uses that members of the community assign to it, where people are protagonists and spectators of random events. 

The dynamic experience of the object intensely connects visitors with their perception of time and place. It builds a space that stimulates the creation of sensory atmospheres where the alternation of sounds and silences of the place allows us to reflect, listen to our interior and imagine a hopeful shared future: Making Earth the Best Place to Live.