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Revealed: First images of poignant 7/7 memorial
Terry Kirby03.07.09
These are the first images of the striking memorial in Hyde Park to the victims of the July 7 bombings.
The £1 million London Bombing Memorial is due to be officially unveiled by the Prince of Wales on Tuesday, the fourth anniversary of the attacks.
It has been designed as a “dignified and tranquil space” by two London-based architects, Kevin Carmody and Andrew Groarke, who have been working in close collaboration with the families of the 52 victims over the past two years.
The architects, whose practice is only four years old, won the commission in an open competition.
Gallery: See more pictures of the memorial here
They have described the process of working with the families as “very intense” and said they were “enablers” of the memorial, as much as designers.
The tribute, in the south-east corner of the park, near Lovers' Walk and Park Lane, consists of 52 roughly textured stainless steel pillars, each 3.5 metres high and representing one of the victims. They are grouped together in four interlinking clusters, of six, seven, 13 and 26, reflecting the number of lives lost in each of the four bombing incidents, at Russell Square, Aldgate and Edgware Road underground stations and at Tavistock Square.
Each column— called a stele, from the Greek word for an inscribed memorial stone — carries a simple inscription recording the date, the location and time of the bombing written in a special font, also called stele.
The names of the dead are inscribed in alphabetical order on a plinth which is set into an embankment nearby.
Groarke was recently quoted as saying that the memorial needed to convey “a very complex” message: "That there are 52 individual lives being remembered and that there is also the sense of radiating collective loss across London and beyond.”
Angel of the North sculptor Anthony Gormley — who the two architects met when working on his King's Cross studio — was also involved in the design.
It was overseen by a committee of families and officials from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and the Royal Parks.
Tuesday's ceremony will be attended by many survivors of the bombing, relatives of the victims and representatives of the emergency services and government ministers.
In an initial response to the wishes of the victim's families, the memorial was originally due to be sited in Tavistock Square, where the last of the four bombs exploded. However, two years ago, after further consultation, the location was changed because of the Park's “prominence, history and central location”.
Gallery: See more pictures of the memorial here
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