M E M O R Y                                    Stinson Beach Memorial

Memorial Design for the residents of Stinson Beach

Winning Competition Entry,1,500 sf, Stinson Beach, CA

The Stinson Beach Community Center Memorial Project committee of the Stinson Beach Village Association launched a two-stage competition for the design of a memorial at the Community Center Chapel that will “provide a place for remembrance of our departed friends and family…”

Our winning “Waves” concept for the memorial is based on the idea of waves of people, waves of time, and waves of emotion.  Our goal is to create a touchstone for the residents that reflects how these interlaced waves have created the singular community of Stinson Beach.

A street-side, solid stone entry post to the Memorial Project, engraved with volunteers’ and contributors’ names, announces the beginning of the journey. The stone-paved walk itself is engraved with years reaching back to the first known coastal tribes and culminating with the end of the 21st century. The first three waves of human settlement that created the original spiritual and cultural ecologies of the Stinson Beach community: the Coastal Miwok tribes, Hispanic landholders, and then settlers of European descent primarily from the Eastern states, are collected in time lines that converge at the “Turning Point” blossoming tree.  This element commemorates the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, whose refugees changed the course of the area, and the 1916 incorporation of the town as “Stinson Beach”. The benches serve as a kind of entrance to the creekside trail

Time is at the heart of our proposal. We provide 3-dimensional “timelines” (curvilinear SS, acid washed tubes to which are attached individually engraved river rocks) that collect and parallel into a larger story of the whole community.  At the back of the Chapel, the lattice-work of tubes gather into a bowl like enclosure or “Tidal Pool” of attached stones, and surround a solitary wooden bench from which to contemplate the interwoven roles of time, place and person that define Stinson Beach.