Design Company: GREENinc Landscape Architecture

　　Design Team: Anton Comrie and James French

　　Client: Urban Genesis

　　Architect: Albonico Sack Metacity

　　Engineers: Trinamics Consulting Engineers

　　Artist: Marco Cianfanelli

　　Start of Construction: April 2010

　　Completion Date: February 2011

　　The Sharpeville Memorial Garden is situated in the Phelindaba Cemetery (where the 69 graves of those killed are located) where it provides a place of remembrance and gathering for the local community. The project was conceived as a ‘procession through the garden’ based of the concepts of memorial, gathering and viewing. Key elements of the project are the Memorial Wall, Amphitheatre and Flowers.

　　The memorial wall, built from clay brick, has a skeletal row of raw-steel columns along its outer edge. Each column is topped with a granite flag. These steel columns are representative of people – standing in a row, all facing the same direction. A planter in the top of the wall contains a Freylinia hedge with delicate white flowers which juxtapose the harshness of the steel and granite along the length of the wall.

　　Situated within the lawned space behind this wall, the ‘flowers’, a series of 156 unique vertical raw-steel poles each finished off with a black and white granite ‘flower head’, serve as a permanent bouquet of flowers laid on the memorial – akin to those left daily on graves in the cemetery.