MIT Officer Collier Memorial | MIT | Cambridge

[whighlander]

With the opening of the Marathon Bombing Trial its appropriate to look at the work associated with the first permanent memorial -- the MIT Officer Collier Memorial

http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/work-begins-collier-memorial-1010

Artist’s rendering of the Collier Memorial

Image courtesy of Höweler + Yoon Architecture, Squared Design Lab.
An open hand
Constructed like a complex puzzle around a central keystone, the Collier Memorial will comprise five archways in the shape of a protective yet open hand. As Yoon has designed it, the structure is built of solid granite to embody strength and encompasses a void at the center that evokes the absence of a large figure.

The memorial will stand at the intersection of Vassar and Main Streets, where there is now a small garden between the Stata Center and the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. This site is very close to where Collier lost his life. While the structure’s open center creates a sheltered space for reflection and contemplation, the five “fingers” radiate outward and frame significant views, including a view of where Collier’s patrol car was parked.

“This has become a very ‘MIT’ endeavor,” Yoon explains, “because developing and constructing the memorial requires a coming-together of like-minded, like-spirited people from many different disciplines to create something singular in the world.”

Class of 1942 Professor of Architecture and Engineering John Ochsendorf and his Masonry Research Group have been consulting with the project team on the memorial. Together with Yoon, Ochsendorf’s students developed an interactive tool that enables the design team to test various geometries and get real-time feedback to ensure that the structure’s load is distributed safely even as the form is adjusted due to site and design parameters.
“As a load-bearing granite structure, this memorial is unprecedented in scale and complexity,” explains Ochsendorf, who volunteers his time. “It involves the digital fabrication of the stones, complex structural engineering, and traditional crafts and trade skills upon installation, so it calls upon a wide range of proficiencies. Together, the stones will stand 11 feet tall and weigh 190 tons — and they will balance in equilibrium, relying on compression with minimal external assistance. It’s a world-class venture in terms of design and engineering.”

Strength through unity
Yoon’s design for the Collier Memorial entails piecing together roughly 32 massive sections of solid granite, each weighing between 5,000 and 11,000 pounds and held in place primarily through weight and compression. The stones are being quarried in Virginia and shipped to Wisconsin, where they will be robotically carved into precise shapes.

“The memorial achieves its full strength and stability only when all of the pieces are in place,” says Yoon. “Each stone is a different size and shape of natural quarried block, and the pieces in the compression ring around the keystone have curvature in all three dimensions. We wanted to make sure the geometry was a result of bringing form and forces together — enabling the public to move through the structure as a threshold or gateway in remembrance of Sean’s service.”

Yoon and her collaborators are now in the process of determining the best method of installing the memorial’s stones; the current plan is to start with the keystone and build outward. Due to the scale and complexity of its components, the construction of the memorial will require weeks of time as well as extraordinary patience and precision.
From UROPs to PhDs, a range of students has been engaged in both design and structural research for the project. Student work includes conducting tests to confirm the relationship between overall form and specific details of the design relating to gravity loads as well as earthquake loads and other natural events.

“Our goal is to create something that will stand for centuries,” notes Ochsendorf. “The effort by Meejin and her team is a great example of how to put a diversity of research into practice to see what works. It’s been a huge undertaking by everyone from the designers and engineers to the fabricators and builders.”
“People think of design as a creative enterprise,” says Yoon, “but in this case, both the design and the engineering have made this an incredibly creative process, and I’m looking forward to the next phases.”....

The project team includes:

• Architect: Höweler + Yoon Architecture
• Structural engineer: Knippers Helbig Advanced Engineering
• Masonry consultant: Ochsendorf DeJong and Block Consulting Engineers
• Landscape architect: Richard Burck Associates
• Geotech engineer: McPhail Associates
• Civil engineer: Nitsch Engineering
• Lighting designer: Horton Lees Brogden Lighting Design
• Electrical engineer: AHA Consulting Engineer
• Construction manager: Suffolk Construction
• Project manager: MIT Department of Facilities

 

[Bos77]

Interesting.

This might be an unpopular sentiment, but does anyone feel like we rush to memorialize EVERYTHING these days? I don't want to discount what happened...the ultimate sacrifice as a first responder. The emotion of that week in Boston still haunts me. But this is also one incident, and there are many police, firefighters, EMTs hurt or killed the line of duty every year. Should this be an expectation for every first responder who dies in the line of duty? Is it fair the high profile case gets a memorial, but a nondescript robbery with the same end result does not? There has been many a genocide not memorialized for generations after it happened. So why do we, as a culture, feel the need to rush to construct memorials with such urgency?? I'm torn here...the emotions and sacrifices are real, but is it necessary?? Am I alone here, or does anyone else feel like this phenomenon is relatively recent?

Thoughts?

 

[datadyne007]

Interesting.

This might be an unpopular sentiment, but does anyone feel like we rush to memorialize EVERYTHING these days? I don't want to discount what happened...the ultimate sacrifice as a first responder. The emotion of that week in Boston still haunts me. But this is also one incident, and there are many police, firefighters, EMTs hurt or killed the line of duty every year. Should this be an expectation for every first responder who dies in the line of duty? Is it fair the high profile case gets a memorial, but a nondescript robbery with the same end result does not? There has been many a genocide not memorialized for generations after it happened. So why do we, as a culture, feel the need to rush to construct memorials with such urgency?? I'm torn here...the emotions and sacrifices are real, but is it necessary?? Am I alone here, or does anyone else feel like this phenomenon is relatively recent?

Thoughts?

I agree with you. This is way too heavy handed. A plaque and/or statue of him in the plaza where we has killed would be appropriate if they did want to memorialize him. This memorial is going to be yet another hardscaped wasteland. It is counterproductive to the urban environment.

 

[FK4]

Interesting.

This might be an unpopular sentiment, but does anyone feel like we rush to memorialize EVERYTHING these days? I don't want to discount what happened...the ultimate sacrifice as a first responder. The emotion of that week in Boston still haunts me. But this is also one incident, and there are many police, firefighters, EMTs hurt or killed the line of duty every year. Should this be an expectation for every first responder who dies in the line of duty? Is it fair the high profile case gets a memorial, but a nondescript robbery with the same end result does not? There has been many a genocide not memorialized for generations after it happened. So why do we, as a culture, feel the need to rush to construct memorials with such urgency?? I'm torn here...the emotions and sacrifices are real, but is it necessary?? Am I alone here, or does anyone else feel like this phenomenon is relatively recent?

Thoughts?

Yes.

 

[393b40]

Interesting.

This might be an unpopular sentiment, but does anyone feel like we rush to memorialize EVERYTHING these days? I don't want to discount what happened...the ultimate sacrifice as a first responder. The emotion of that week in Boston still haunts me. But this is also one incident, and there are many police, firefighters, EMTs hurt or killed the line of duty every year. Should this be an expectation for every first responder who dies in the line of duty? Is it fair the high profile case gets a memorial, but a nondescript robbery with the same end result does not? There has been many a genocide not memorialized for generations after it happened. So why do we, as a culture, feel the need to rush to construct memorials with such urgency?? I'm torn here...the emotions and sacrifices are real, but is it necessary?? Am I alone here, or does anyone else feel like this phenomenon is relatively recent?

Thoughts?

Yes.

It also cheapens all other memorials. Let's be honest with ourselves, I feel terrible for what happened for Officer Collier, but if this was an armed robbery gone bad rather than terrorism nobody would be calling for a memorial.

 

[WormtownNative]

Well, MIT is known for being a tad excessive sometimes.......


As someone in the public safety sector (currently on the job hunt for an emergency management position and volunteer with a organization that performs firefighter rehab at structure fires, etc.), I would agree this is just a *tad* over the top.

FF Kennedy & Lt. Walsh won't get a memorial that big. They'll get a plaque mounted somewhere on the premises of Engine 33's house in Back Bay. A small memorial is more than enough. Not some hulking abstract modern art "masterpiece."

 

[Suffolk 83]

Interesting.

This might be an unpopular sentiment, but does anyone feel like we rush to memorialize EVERYTHING these days? I don't want to discount what happened...the ultimate sacrifice as a first responder. The emotion of that week in Boston still haunts me. But this is also one incident, and there are many police, firefighters, EMTs hurt or killed the line of duty every year. Should this be an expectation for every first responder who dies in the line of duty? Is it fair the high profile case gets a memorial, but a nondescript robbery with the same end result does not? There has been many a genocide not memorialized for generations after it happened. So why do we, as a culture, feel the need to rush to construct memorials with such urgency?? I'm torn here...the emotions and sacrifices are real, but is it necessary?? Am I alone here, or does anyone else feel like this phenomenon is relatively recent?

Thoughts?

Yes.... I'm just going to go along with the crowd on this on. I tend to be a little insensitive at times and my gut reaction was basically the statement above. Happy to see I'm not alone on this

 

[Padre Mike]

I agree with you all. The plus side of this memorial is that it is abstract/interactive sculpture which can enhance the area regardless of its deeper meaning. Much better than the first responders' memorials at the State House, which are literal, boring, and static. they are mean only to fill a political gap and, I imagine, are hardly noticed by passers-by. The MIT memorial, like a lot of academic public works, says more about MIT than about the fallen officer, kind of like the Stata Center, which says more about the imagination and scope of the architect than the functioning of the students within.

 

[quinninin]

I just generally dislike the design, as it feels very cold. Appropriate to memorialize him but some greenery would make it a more warm and inviting space.

 

[Equilibria]

I just generally dislike the design, as it feels very cold. Appropriate to memorialize him but some greenery would make it a more warm and inviting space.

Complete agreement. I get that MIT is a private entity and Sean Collier is probably (hopefully) the only employee who will ever be killed in the line of duty. They have a right to memorialize him in an extravagant way. This design, however, is cold, dark, and will in 20 years be a bleak and forbidding feature on the landscape. Folks will forget the association with Collier and just think of it as "that ugly grey sculpture thing".

A garden would have been much better. Spend whatever extravagant amount you want on it. Gardens are better for memorializing people than hunks of stone anyhow.

 

[Shepard]

Not going to comment on the appropriateness of the extravagant memorial, but from an urban standpoint I do actually quite like this. It splits up an amorphous space at a busy car-dominated intersection into a series of smaller intimate urban "rooms" which I think will be largely successful in grafting street life onto that corner - more so than a garden, which, let's be honest, would probably be just green space landscaping to look pretty to passing motorists. This design is unique, very MIT, and urbanistically sound.

 

[datadyne007]

Complete agreement. I get that MIT is a private entity and Sean Collier is probably (hopefully) the only employee who will ever be killed in the line of duty. They have a right to memorialize him in an extravagant way. This design, however, is cold, dark, and will in 20 years be a bleak and forbidding feature on the landscape. Folks will forget the association with Collier and just think of it as "that ugly grey sculpture thing".

A garden would have been much better. Spend whatever extravagant amount you want on it. Gardens are better for memorializing people than hunks of stone anyhow.

Completely agreed. It's really the hardscape that is the issue, not the fact that it's excessive memorializing. A tranquil sitting garden on that hardscape would be a much better tribute rather than bizarre holey walls and slab seats. No one wants to sit on a stone seat.

 

[Arlington]

It is sad and intimate and very MIT. I'd say it is right for them. Not quite as sublimely mellow as a St Gaudens' Adams Memorial, nor as bad as the "plant a tree/cenotaph" ilk. I'd have put his name on a leaf, not the core, allowing that there could be similarly sad deaths yet that could share in this pantheon. If it isn't impossible, it eventually will happen again.

This might be an unpopular sentiment, but does anyone feel like we rush to memorialize EVERYTHING these days?

At my college every class had something they wanted remembered for the ages, for which I coined the term "embarrassing plaque buildup"

 

[HenryAlan]

Interesting.

This might be an unpopular sentiment, but does anyone feel like we rush to memorialize EVERYTHING these days? I don't want to discount what happened...the ultimate sacrifice as a first responder. The emotion of that week in Boston still haunts me. But this is also one incident, and there are many police, firefighters, EMTs hurt or killed the line of duty every year. Should this be an expectation for every first responder who dies in the line of duty? Is it fair the high profile case gets a memorial, but a nondescript robbery with the same end result does not? There has been many a genocide not memorialized for generations after it happened. So why do we, as a culture, feel the need to rush to construct memorials with such urgency?? I'm torn here...the emotions and sacrifices are real, but is it necessary?? Am I alone here, or does anyone else feel like this phenomenon is relatively recent?

Thoughts?

Agreed. To honor a singular sacrifice in such an elaborate fashion really says something not good about our priorities when there are so many examples of suffering and death that have gone unremarked over the years. A tasteful remembrance is a nice idea, but something like this should be reserved for remembering events having had more radical or fundamental impacts to society as a whole.

That said, I do like this, I just don't think it's appropriate for the purpose.

 

[tmac9wr]

I think the size of the memorial and urgency of its creation is related less to how he died and more to why he died.

We're certainly creating memorials quicker nowadays, and I think it's because our society metabolizes tragedy much faster than it did in years past. With that said, I'd prefer this memorial not break ground for a few years.

 

[Savin Hill]

I think the memorial is actually beautifully designed, largely unnecessary, and my knucklehead fifteen year old self is going to skateboard on every conceivable surface of it.

 

[whighlander]

Completely agreed. It's really the hardscape that is the issue, not the fact that it's excessive memorializing. A tranquil sitting garden on that hardscape would be a much better tribute rather than bizarre holey walls and slab seats. No one wants to sit on a stone seat.

Data -- I like gardens -- but the Vasser / Main corner between the Stata and the Koch -- that is quintessential hardscape territory -- a garden right there would be either subjected to accidental abuse by pedestrians and students recreating -- or it would have to be walled-off to protect it -- both would be bad.

As for the memorial itself -- I'll wait to see the real stone before I judge the success or failure of the memorial itself

However, I do like the idea of building it the old fashion way -- letting gravity and the Pauli Exclusion Principle hold it together -- one for the ages -- even if designed and prefabbed with the state of the art in CAD and robotic tools

I had my qualms about the renders of the Armenian Genocide Memorial on the Greenway -- but it actually turned out to be quite pleasant and a positive addtion

 

[diggity]

I work in the building immediately adjacent to the memorial (76, not Stata) and I'm in agreement with everyone. And the unfortunate thing is that there was green space here. Small and kind of weirdly landscaped, but at least not cold and sterile. The spontaneous memorial that popped up in the aftermath – flowers, flags (because terrorism), and a small understated plaque featuring Collier's badge number, all next to a bench that happened to already be there – was simple and honestly kind of perfect.

 

[bolehboleh]

I work in the building immediately adjacent to the memorial (76, not Stata) and I'm in agreement with everyone. And the unfortunate thing is that there was green space here. Small and kind of weirdly landscaped, but at least not cold and sterile. The spontaneous memorial that popped up in the aftermath – flowers, flags (because terrorism), and a small understated plaque featuring Collier's badge number, all next to a bench that happened to already be there – was simple and honestly kind of perfect.

I remember that. I was living in the neighborhood at the time, and to be honest, I never really got emotional or upset after the bombings. When I came across that small memorial they had made for him, it all seemed real at that time.

 

[cozzyd]

Surprisingly, that's the only night I ever slept in my office (building 26) as MIT didn't announce the all-clear until 2 or 3 am. The amusing thing is right after we all got the shelter-in-place alert and we locked the door and turned off the lights, we hear someone unlocking our office door and we totally freak out; apparently the custodial staff weren't informed of the shooting yet...


Anyway, I guess this memorial fits in with MIT's generally strange public art...


I wonder if MIT would ever consider building a memorial for Aaron Swartz in the basement of building 16...