Dublin, revisited – in a public art context

A 2009 PLANT project is the subject of a brand-new video

The Dublin Grounds of Remembrance, completed in Dublin, Ohio, in 2009, remains a PLANT project we often cite as an example of how we design something that is meaningful to a particular place. Recently, the Dublin Arts Council interviewed Lisa Rapoport, PLANT's partner in charge on the Grounds of Remembrance, for a series of videos highlighting the thriving public art program that this small city (Dublin has just under 50,000 inhabitants) has championed since 1988.

It’s great to revisit this project in that context, and to see that this veterans’ memorial park has remained a community focal point. Intended as a place for Memorial Day and Veterans Day ceremonies and also as a site for private remembrance and reflection, the Dublin Grounds of Remembrance commemorates all military service, as opposed to a particular conflict or battle. “We felt that a single structure – a monument, if you will, was not appropriate,” Lisa Rapoport recalls. “We asked ourselves: Is there a way that we can have a kind of act on the site, as opposed to a thing on the site, that would really reinforce remembrance?” That act became walking a circuit around Dublin’s existing heritage cemetery, past new elements including a bronze loggia, a memory wall, a sycamore grove, and a walkway paved with dedication stones. Through this act – especially for people who walk the circuit time and again – an emotional connection to the landscape is created. As Lisa says in the video, “If we could make a place where people would go there and just notice it every time they went and notice it in a special way, that creates a kind of muscle memory, which is remembrance.”

Today is Remembrance Day in Canada and Veterans Day in the United States, a time to reflect on service, sacrifice, and reasons for gratitude. And as the Art in Public Places program of City of Dublin and the Dublin Arts Council reminds us, it’s also good to pause and reflect now and then on public art, which “changes a space to a thought-provoking place.”