Future site of Dr. Martin Luther King Memorial Jr. : 無料・フリー素材/写真
Future site of Dr. Martin Luther King Memorial Jr. / dbking
| ライセンス | クリエイティブ・コモンズ 表示 2.1 |
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| 説明 | Massive King memorial nearly ready for trip to Mall for assemblyBy Michael E. RuaneWashington Post Staff WriterThursday, February 11, 2010Sometime in the next several weeks, if all goes as planned, 159 huge blocks of granite will be loaded aboard ships in the seaport of Xiamen, China, for an 11,000-mile journey to Washington. Bound for a site on the Tidal Basin, the cargo includes one block that bears the likeness of Martin Luther King Jr. and the dreams of generations of African Americans. The other blocks -- which weigh as much as 55 tons each -- make up the rest of the mammoth, three-part sculpture that is the centerpiece of the $120 million memorial to the slain civil rights leader. Assembly is scheduled to begin this year. More than a decade in the making, finally "it's here," said Ed Jackson Jr., the project's executive architect. The memorial, the first on the Mall honoring an African American, also will be a monumental construction project. It will require erecting one of the biggest figurative sculptures in Washington -- a three-story-tall relief of King -- atop a landscape of compressed mud. (The carving of King's head alone weighs 46 tons.) It will require driving more than 300 concrete piles as deep as 50 feet through the dirt to support the monument's foundation. This must be done without damaging the adjacent Tidal Basin seawall, which has already sunk into the muck at the Jefferson Memorial across the basin. A multimillion-dollar seawall repair project is underway there. And it will require that the three parts of the sculpture have cores of concrete, rather than solid granite, to reduce weight. Authorized by Congress in 1996, the King memorial has weathered 14 years of fundraising challenges, artistic controversy and bureaucratic squabbles. Complaints erupted when a sculptor in China was selected to execute the chief parts of the design. More trouble came after the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts criticized the sculptor's image of King as too grim and totalitarian. And the project was held up for months recently by a dispute over the kind of security elements the memorial should have. But on Oct. 29, with problems resolved, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar signed the construction permit. Work on the site began in December, a project official said. Total construction time is estimated to be 20 months. Next month, a delegation from the Washington-based foundation that is building the memorial is scheduled to visit China for a final look at the sculpture before its shipment here, currently set for sometime in March or April. "It's going to be happening very soon," Jackson said. The carving is about 80 percent complete, project officials said. The sculptor, Lei Yixin, plans to finish the work in Washington as the pieces are assembled this summer and fall. The King memorial, located not far from the Lincoln Memorial where King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963, is to be built on a crescent-shaped, four-acre site amid the city's famed cherry trees. The three main elements resemble a simulated stone mountain from which the center has been carved out and placed by itself in the foreground. The centerpiece -- named the Stone of Hope for a line from the 1963 speech -- is 30 feet 8 inches tall and bears the image of King in a business suit with his arms folded. Although not as large as some of Washington's equestrian monuments, it will be bigger than the 19-foot statue of Jefferson in the Jefferson Memorial, the 19-foot 6-inch statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial and the 19-foot 6-inch statue of Freedom on the U.S. Capitol dome. "That is a really massive piece of sculpture," said Kirk Savage, professor of the history of art and architecture at the University of Pittsburgh and the author of a recent book on Washington's monuments. The two background pieces -- together called the Mountain of Despair from the same line in the speech -- are of similar size and frame a walkway through which visitors may pass to get to the King sculpture. Each of the three parts weighs thousands of tons, even with a core of concrete, and will rest on the mushy ground beneath the Mall west of the Washington Monument. Hence the pilings. Many of the Mall's monuments, including the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial and the FDR Memorial, rest on pilings for support. The World War II Memorial rests on almost 500 piles, according to Kenneth J. Terry, construction executive with Tompkins Builders, one of the King project contractors. "If it didn't, it would sink," he said. Jackson, the executive architect, said: "It's like having cookie dough. We're driving piles into the cookie dough. It's like sticking your finger into it, and you stick your finger into it until you get to the bottom of the pan." The ground is soft because it is mostly mud that was dredged from the Potomac River in the late 1800s and used as fill. The adjacent Tidal Basin seawall will be carefully monitored because of the way it has sunk at the Jefferson Memorial. "There are probably potential problems around the entire Tidal Basin with the seawall," Jackson said. But Terry, the construction executive, said the mud is not expected to transmit severe vibrations from the pile drivers to the seawall. Pile driving could begin next month, he said. The sculptures will be assembled from the granite blocks, much like a child might build with a set of toy blocks. Each block is cut and carved. Once they are disassembled in China, they will be shipped, probably aboard several vessels, to Baltimore, then put into storage until needed, Jackson said. On the Tidal Basin, they will be lifted by a huge crane that will put them in place to form the facades of the sculptures. After the bottom row of blocks is placed in a kind of circular pattern, concrete will be used to fill in the center. "You create a ring, and then you pour the center with concrete," Jackson said. "Then you do another ring, and you pour again, until you work all the way up." Jackson said the three main elements are far too big to be made of solid granite: "How would you lift it?" he asked. Savage, the historian, noted that the tradition of colossal sculpture goes back to ancient times. "We know it in the United States from the Statue of Liberty and Mount Rushmore," he said. "But in Washington, this will be a very, very unusual piece of work. . . . It's almost like a pyramid they're building." --------------------Future site of the memorial in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. This site is on the NW side of the Tidal Basin with a direct view of the Jefferson MemorialHere is a link to the design of this new memorial (enlarge the photo attached)www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/11/...This is site map, showing location relative to the "line of leadership" as well as a virtual tour of memorial under the resources tabwww.mlkmemorial.org/site/c.hkIUL9MVJxE/b.1190619/k.932C/S...Memorial Planners Have a Dream, TooMall Site Honoring King Reaches Next MilestoneBy Petula DvorakWashington Post Staff WriterSunday, November 12, 2006Ground will be broken in many ways tomorrow morning with a ceremony heralding construction of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the Mall.The memorial, scheduled to be completed in 2008, will mark a change in the very character of some of America's most hallowed real estate.The Mall is lined with memorials to wars and the soldiers who died in them and marble monuments to great presidents. But this addition to Washington's monumental core will be a unique paean to the man and the ideal that it honors -- a civilian and an African American who embodied the American tradition of peaceful protest and activism."I think, like many kids, I came to D.C. years ago and saw all the monuments," said Harry E. Johnson Sr., president of the Washington, D.C. Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation Inc. "But there never was a memorial to a man of color, a man of peace."And even today, there is nothing to place King in the proper historical context. He is among the giants of our country, though he was not a war hero nor a president," Johnson added.Tomorrow's groundbreaking ceremony is expected to draw 5,000 people. It will feature former president Bill Clinton, who signed the 1996 bill authorizing the memorial. Talk show host Oprah Winfrey and poet Maya Angelou also will speak.They will gather at the sweeping four-acre site along the Tidal Basin that sits halfway between monuments to Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, and Lincoln, liberator of slaves. The crescent-shaped memorial park will be near the steps leading to the Lincoln Memorial, where King gave his electrifying "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963.Cranes and backhoes won't move in immediately, however. This groundbreaking is ceremonial, and the construction permits from either the secretary of the Interior or the General Services Administration will be issued once fundraising is complete. In the case of the World War II Memorial, permits were issued two months after the groundbreaking ceremony attended by about 10,000 people on Veterans Day 2000.The design of the memorial park is the physical articulation of one of the most famous and powerful passages in King's 1963 Washington speech.After outlining the dream of his children growing up to live in a nation where people are judged by the content of their character, where even in the racist South black and white children would join hands as sisters and brothers, he added:"This hope is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. And with this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day."At the memorial to King's vision, visitors will enter through a 12-foot-wide cut in the wall, walking through a tall, dark passage symbolizing the Mountain of Despair.Once visitors pass through the portal, the view of the Tidal Basin's waters and ring of trees will unfold. The giant stone piece removed from the wall to create the opening will be in the middle of the plaza. King's image will be sculpted from it, emerging from the rough-hewn Stone of Hope.The design team is working on plans to create waterfalls that will flow in a syncopated rhythm reflecting King's oratory style, cascading over a wall engraved with his words.The design, created by the ROMA Design Group of San Francisco, has had an unusually warm reception since it was unveiled in 2000, compared with the harsh criticism that stalled other contemporary memorials.Many considered the Vietnam Veterans Memorial too modern and abstract when it was introduced in 1981. The World War II Memorial was called too large and complicated for such a prominent spot on the Mall when construction began in 2001.The King Memorial's design has received resounding kudos."It's very elegant and simple and moving," Thomas Luebke, secretary of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, said. "It's interesting that on part of the Mall, there is a theme developing. It is less about war and more about ideas and aspirations."The prominent site was authorized by Congress in 1998. Its place was secured even after Congress passed the Reserve Act of 2003 forbidding further construction in the core of the Mall. The King Memorial is likely to be one of the last giant monuments to furnish the nation's front yard.The biggest obstacle the memorial has faced is money. And that's part of the message its backers will send during tomorrow's ceremonial groundbreaking.They have raised almost two-thirds of the $100 million needed to build. Efforts have been beset by delays."The fundraising is difficult, period," Johnson said. "There is always something else looking for attention of the donors. There was 9/11, then the tsunami, then Hurricane Katrina."In 2001, the foundation struggled with King's family, which wanted a fee for the use of the slain civil right's leaders name. An agreement was eventually reached and no fee paid.But the delay pushed the foundation up against the December 2003 deadline imposed by Congress to complete the monument, and it had to apply for an extension.Supporters of the memorial would like to finish fundraising before the eventual construction of the National Museum of African American Culture and History, slated for Constitution Avenue and 14th Street NW on the Mall. It will be tapping much of the same donor base that the King memorial is targeting."We want to be out of the way before the museum starts up, so there's no competition for donations," Johnson said. "We're accepting donations, from $1 on up. If only everyone in America gave us $1." |
| 撮影日 | 2006-11-10 12:12:00 |
| 撮影者 | dbking , Washington, DC |
| 撮影地 | |
| カメラ | Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT , Canon |
| 露出 | 0.003 sec (1/400) |
| 開放F値 | f/13.0 |
| 焦点距離 | 24 mm |