“Piscataway’s Divine Garden”

Course: ARCH 406

Typology: Memorial Garden

Location: College Park, Maryland

About: For this project students were asked to design a commemorative space/ space and monument/ marker with The college Park University environment that forms a threshold condition between institutional and cultural contexts, and to develop a body of precedents that will stimulate exploration of the potential utilization of these sites within the Urban Fabric of UMD and College Park.

Concept: The Piscataway’s Divine Garden design’s purpose is to hold that spiritual essence that the Piscataway tribe once had when occupying this land many years ago; from the wildlife to the eternal energies of nature, all are displayed within this Garden. In order to understand what the Piscataway tribe once experienced, we must take a look back through the last 400 years and what led the tribe to vanishing. In this design the garden indirectly gives us a history hinting at the struggles the tribe endured and extraordinary land they once had.