Resonant Memory: Las Vegas Memorial

with SWA & RE:site

Country songs always rely on a personal story. The lyrics are never just fillers for the melody; they are carefully thought out to describe a person, place, or event through a narrative arc. Our concept is inspired by the shared love of country music—a love that brought people from all over the world to the Route 91 Music Festival—and by their personal stories.

The body of the guitar amplifies the vibration of the strings, and the sound hole transmits the sound waves to the air. As a metaphor, the notion of absence or void enabling amplification becomes a key theme in the design. We envision the Memorial as a place where the absence left by the 58 fallen concertgoers is amplified by a celebration of the memory of lives lived.

A musician and an acoustic guitar are intertwined in a seamless embrace. The concertgoers of that fateful night heroically shielded each other from the bullets in a selfless embrace. The community wrapped its arms around the victims and their families with unprecedented kindness and love. Our proposal abstracts and transforms the enveloping qualities of an embrace into a spatial composition that unfolds into a narrative journey of hope, healing, and memory.

We are deeply humbled to have been part of this important competition to design a memorial for Clark County, the Las Vegas community and the Route 91 Family.