1:37 PM: Three teams of designers were announced as finalists today in a contest to create a veterans memorial for San Francisco’s Civic Center.
The finalists, who all have experience working on memorial projects, were announced at a noontime event at Memorial Court, between the War Memorial Opera House and the Veterans Building.
Memorial Court is where the memorial will eventually be built. A veterans memorial was planned there when the court was completed in 1936, but was never installed at the site.
In one of the design teams named as finalists, Lee Norman is teaming up with Scott Slaney and Ricardo Supiciche of SWA Group.
Norman has won several memorial competitions, including in Chile and in Toledo, Ohio. SWA Group helped create the living roof garden at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.
A second team consists of Larry Kirkland and J. Douglass Macy. Kirkland is working with disabled veterans to create a national memorial in Washington, D.C., and has collaborated on several occasions with Macy, who has created a Vietnam Veterans memorial in Portland, Ore.
The last of the finalists is artist and architect Susan Narduli, who is teaming with San Francisco-based landscape architect Andrea Cochran.
Narduli has worked on several memorials in California, including in Long Beach, Ventura and Orange.
The finalists will each submit their proposals, which will be put on display at the Veterans Building in the spring. The Veterans Memorial Committee will announce the winner in May.
Members of the public, particularly military veterans, are encouraged to come and view the proposals once they are displayed, and to share their thoughts about them.
Once the winner is named, the memorial will be built using about $2 million in private donations. It is scheduled to be dedicated in November 2013.
For more information, or to donate to the memorial project, visit www.sfveteransmemorial.org.
11:19 AM: Finalists are being announced today in a contest to design a veterans memorial for San Francisco’s Civic Center.
Former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz and former Defense Secretary William Perry, the co-chairs of the San Francisco Veterans Memorial Steering Committee, will announce the three design team finalists for the project at noon.
Kate Patterson, spokeswoman for the San Francisco Arts Commission, which is overseeing the competition, said hundreds of artists from around the country applied for the opportunity to design the memorial.
The three finalists were selected “based on their past work,” Patterson said. “All the (three) teams have experience working on memorial projects.”
The finalists are in town to view the memorial site, located in Memorial Court between the War Memorial Opera House and the Veterans Building. They will submit their proposals for the project in spring 2011.
Members of the public, particularly military veterans, are encouraged to come out today to Memorial Court to fill out a comment card with what they want to see in the memorial.
“They’re invited to come and tell the artists what kind of emotions or feelings they’d like the memorial to convey, and anything else about the site and the nature of the veterans community in the Bay Area,” Patterson said.
The San Francisco Veterans Memorial will fulfill the original 1920s vision for the War Memorial complex. Memorial Court was completed in 1936, but a veterans memorial was never installed at the site.
It will finally be built, funded by about $2 million in private donations, and is planned to be formally dedicated in November 2013.
For more information, or to donate to the memorial project, visit www.sfveteransmemorial.org.
Dan McMenamin, Bay City News
