Contact 67 Cenotaph

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Site: Cape Canaveral, Florida

Team: Alexander J. Ford, Jack R. Parnell

Drawings: Site Plan [22x30"], Plans [22x30"], Section [22x30"'], Perspective [22x30"]

Wn. 2017

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The Contact 67 Cenotaph appeared published by the Princeton Architectural Press, in “Single-Handedly: Contemporary Architects Draw by Hand,” Authored by Nalina Moses. The drawings were exhibited at the Art Omi gallery in New York in part of the Single-Handedly exhibition in the winter of 2019-20. 

 

The Cenotaph is sited in the bay at Cape Canaveral, in the direction of Contact Point 67--the area of the sea identified by the Rogers Commission as the impact site of the Challenger’s crew module. Access to the Cenotaph by ferry should be provided under the direction of the Kennedy Space Center. Rising from a colossal structural pier, the monument takes the form of a battered monolith split along its height and facing away over the expanse of the Atlantic.

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“ ... In a proposed memorial to the seven astronauts killed in the 1986 Challenger explosion, a soaring white cenotaph rises out of the murky waters against a dark and ominous sky. ... The cenotaph is rendered with ultrafine linework that captures the profile and veining of each stone on its exterior [giving] the abstract design an unshakeable physicality. The resulting sheets have the balanced composition of Beaux-Arts studies and the cool drama of surrealist paintings. Portraits of the astronauts, with their eyes covered, hover over the site plan, as if floating in space. The drawings recall the tragedy without literalism of sentimentality.”

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- Nalina Moses, Single-Handedly. 2017.