Commemorative places: Design living memory in the urban landscape

Designing commemorative spaces means embedding stories in the landscape through experiences that unfold over time. Each design has its own intricacies, however: How can urban design embody memory while responding to contemporary needs for connection, healing, and inclusivity?  

A key factor to remember here is that commemoration is not about fixity, it’s about creating places that live, breathe, and evolve. 

Five guiding principles shape this approach: 

• The monumental should also be experiential, inviting people to move, feel, and engage;  

• Participatory and evolving, allowing communities to contribute to their ongoing meaning;  

• An embodiment of narrative, translating history and memory into sensory experience through material and form;  

• Restorative and connective, healing social and spatial divisions;  

• Regenerative and sustainable, honouring memory while actively supporting ecological futures. 

Together, these values frame how memory can be held without being held back. Three distinct yet interconnected projects, Place Karl-Tremblay, Place des Montréalaises, and the Montreal Irish Monument Park, demonstrate how this is possible. 

 More than monuments 

In downtown Montreal, Place des Montréalaises – the result of a collaboration with artist Angela Silver and engineering firm AtkinsRealis – exemplifies how civic infrastructure can become a platform for plural memory. Built atop a former expressway trench, the project reconnects Old Montreal with the city’s modern core through an inclined civic plane and elevated meadow. 

Each of the 21 flowering beds in the meadow represents a woman who helped shape the city’s history. As the seasons change, each garden blooms in turn, marking time and memory simultaneously. 

“The meadow is a living organism,” explains architect Patricia Lussier. “It honours influence, but also reinforces biodiversity and the passing of time.” 

The suspended meadow is complemented by mirrored walls engraved with names, creating contemplative spaces within the larger civic gesture. Together, these elements turn fragmented infrastructure into a space of resilience and commemoration, simultaneously providing a new vegetated area beneficial to the health of the community. 

“Commemorative spaces have shifted from static monuments to dynamic, inclusive environments,” says Lussier. “They’re no longer just sites of remembrance, but places for gathering, protest, healing, and dialogue.” 

Participatory memory 

In Place Karl-Tremblay, located in L’Assomption, memory is designed as a collective act. The project emerged organically following the spontaneous gathering of thousands of people after the death of the beloved singer and frontman of Les Cowboys Fringants in 2023. 

Rather than imposing a monument, the site creates a space for ongoing contribution. A commemorative wall, anchored by one of Tremblay’s own ties, invites visitors to add their own, transforming the wall into a living archive of public tribute and emotion. 

“It’s a space that evolves with its community,” says Mylène Carreau, the project’s design lead. “It reflects the values Karl embodied: humility, humour, inclusion, and environmental care.” 

The site also includes a green esplanade, pavilion, fountain, and gathering zones, offering a place for both informal connection and symbolic remembrance. Designed to be welcoming and familiar, the space embodies commemoration not only as reflection, but as celebration. 

Healing through design 

At the foot of the Victoria Bridge, the Montreal Irish Monument Park reconnects the city with a deeply buried chapter of its past. In 1847, 6,000 Irish immigrants who died of typhus were buried near what is now known as the Black Rock, the oldest Irish famine memorial in the world. 

The new design centres on an agora and mirror pool, placing the Black Rock at its symbolic heart. A corten steel wall, etched with 6,000 Celtic crosses and archival illustrations, extends across the site like the hull of a ship. At its prow-shaped lookout, visitors face the St. Lawrence River and, symbolically, Ireland. 

“A point was made to integrate the voices of the Irish community of Montreal,” explains Marie-Eve Parent, one of the project’s designers. “Community feedback inspired the integration of Celtic forms, stone materials, and landscape references that speak to Irish heritage.” 

The park is a civic and ceremonial space. It includes wide green fields, a pavilion for gathering, and interpretive features that connect to the international Great Famine Way, transforming historic loss into an act of transnational reconciliation. 

 Designing for the future 

All three projects share a future-oriented approach. They’re built for longevity, evolution, and relevance, whether through seasonal planting cycles, flexible programming, or spaces that invite ongoing engagement. “Memory is not static,” says Parent. “Participation, sensory design, and ecological thinking allow commemorative spaces to remain relevant across generations.” 

Sustainability is a common thread: Indigenous plantings, stormwater management, and biodiversity strategies ensure that these spaces are as ecologically resilient as they are meaningful. 

“The commemorative gesture today must also be regenerative,” adds Lussier. “Not just symbolically, but ecologically.” These are not closed narratives. They are platforms ready to host public events, spontaneous gatherings, ceremonies, quiet visits, and personal rituals. 

 A living legacy 

Today’s commemorative spaces do more than preserve memory, they create conditions for ongoing connection. Through memory made tactile, landscape becomes archive. Through collective participation, loss becomes connection. And through resilient, open-ended design, remembrance becomes an invitation to gather, to reflect, and to grow. 

As our understanding of history evolves, so too must the way we honour it. These spaces show how design can bridge generations, activate public space, and reflect the evolving values of the societies we live in. 

What we choose to remember and how we choose to do it shapes not only our past, but our collective future.