“Arlington National Cemetery – Community Engagement of Another Sort”

Mahan Rykiel Associates Landscape Architect, Mayra Filippone, will join landscape architects, artists, planners, architects, geographers, ecologists and social scientists from around the world to speak at the European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools Conference in London.

The four day conference theme, “Creation/ Reaction” focuses on the processes of transformation and revolution in design and how moments of conflict or tension ultimately lead to the most creative solutions.

Filippone’s presentation will focus on community engagement and is entitled “Arlington National Cemetery – Community Engagement of Another Sort”. Filippone will lecture on her experience working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Norfolk District to organize design charrettes with stakeholders during the early planning stages of the Millennium Site Expansion and Southern Expansion projects for the Arlington National Cemetery (ANC).

The project was a complex balancing act that led to a thoughtfully designed expansion plan with a harmonious configuration of interment options. For example, the Millennium Site was topographically challenging, but combination retaining/columbarium niche walls allowed the terracing of traditional open lawn casket burial areas. Niche walls were designed to not stack any taller than the height an average person can reach up to touch. “When people visit the sites of their departed loved ones, it is important to be able to touch something, to feel a tangible connection,” explains Filippone. “Taller niche walls would have allowed for greater capacity for storing cremains which would have extended the life of the cemetery even more so, but it was vitally important that we design for the experience of visitors and to treat all those interred with the sense of respect owing to the nation’s veterans.”

Learn more about the conference at www.eclas2017london.com

Mahan Rykiel Associates is a full service landscape architecture firm located in Baltimore, Maryland, serving clients on five continents. Mahan Rykiel’s mission is to make places more sustainable, equitable and ecological through creative collaboration and design. Visit our website at www.mahanrykiel.com.