Allied Works Architecture released updated renderings of the new Ohio Veterans Memorial project, which will replace the old Veterans Memorial Building on the bank of the Scioto River. Preliminary demolition work has already begun on the inside Vets Memorial, and the new building is slated for completion in December 2016.
The new 53,000 square foot Ohio Veterans Memorial will feature museum exhibition space honoring the 250 years of Ohio military service from over 900,000 Ohio veterans. The main floor includes a great hall, museum store, cafe space and other places for educational programming. The upper portion of the building will feature an exterior “civic room” for special events, ceremonies and other community uses.
Allied Works Architecture issued the following project statement to explain their process for the design:
The Ohio Veterans Memorial and Museum is conceived as an architecture of two acts. The first is an act of landscape, where the surrounding parkland is cut, carved and lifted into the sky, creating a processional path to the sanctuary, a place of ceremony, celebration and reflection – a civic room for the city of Columbus. The second is an act of structure, where a series of concentric arches rise from the earth to hold the sanctuary above. These bands of interwoven concrete hold and protect the museum and its occupants within, creating a labyrinthine journey of exhibitions that illuminate ideas of service, duty and remembrance.
Some of the renderings released by the firm include background buildings that may take shape in future phases of the larger Scioto Peninsula Plan that was announced in August 2013, which calls for private development infill on the rest of the 56 acres of open land currently adjacent to Vets Memorial and COSI.
According to Amy Taylor, COO at the Columbus Downtown Development Corporation and Capitol South, construction is slated to begin on the new building in the Spring of 2015.
All renderings provided by www.alliedworks.com.