Gallipoli Peninsula Historical National Park

CONCEPT

Tony Watkins
“A visit to Gallipoli has the potential to change people, who they are, and how they see the world. A visit has the potential to lift them up so that they might see beyond their existing horizons. This is no ordinary place. The strong Gallipoli landscape has a great deal to say. A 5000 year history.”

The events that took place on the Gallipoli peninsula and the Dardanelles have been so devastating and atrocious, that they will forever inspire people to commemorate the war. When surrounded by the natural beauty of the peninsula it’s hard to imagine this was once the backdrop of such violence. And yet, the more these events fade away in history, the more important it is to commemorate, to keep the history alive and to imagine what it’s like to fear for your live and to honour those who died.
The landscape that we can see nowadays is still the same as it was when the battle took place. Now memorials and burials have taken the place of the armies and their equipment. These two elements - the landscape and the memorials – are almost everything that is needed for a spiritual experience.
Of course in the decades that followed the war everyday life also re-entered this peninsula. It can be seen in the growing towns, the beaches, the infrastructure and around the memorials.
This design proposal creates a new balance between everyday life, the extraordinary history and the beautiful nature. It offers the chance to shortly forget about everyday life and to concentrate on the war and the nature. Remembrance requires not only acoustic silence, but also visual silence. Therefore the design approach is minimalistic.

Memory Trails
The multitude of memorials spread over the peninsula makes it possible to realize the extents of the battle that took place. The best way to experience this is on foot. Walking is the best way to remember things, as well as processing emotions. The scale of the peninsula is so, that one can walk from memorial to memorial.
Nowadays the majority of the visitors arrives by car or autobus. Travelling by foot or by bike requires a mentality change and can be stimulated by laying out a path network that connects al the war memorials. It will accommodate walking routes of one day, but also a week. In this network, towns like Kilitbahir and Alçitepe will offer gastronomy and accommodation. Walking on Gallipoli could become like walking the trail to Santiago de Compostela: a healing experience. On this island one can commemorate the dead, but also remember that one’s own life is final (memento mori).
By connecting existing dirt paths and roads, a coherent path network is easily created. This network leads to the various biotopes of the island and the various moments in the history of the battle. It is built up by a low route, roughly following the coast line, and a network of inland connections, leading through pastures, meadows, forests, hills and valleys. As the Gallipoli Campaign was fought both on land and at sea, the locations where boats have sunken are marked by floating lights that can be seen at night. The viewpoints from which these locations can be seen are marked and connected by the path network.
The 124.000 soldiers that died during the battle, are spread over the different armies: Turkish, English, French, Australian and from New Zealand. But in the end it doesn’t matter who had which nationality: every soldier is a human being, and every died soldier should be grieved. Therefore the memory trails should be universal, leading equally to all memorials and burials.

A Medal For Every Soldier
To represent the casualties, regardless on which side they fought, one universal medal is made for each dead soldier. The figure of the medal combines a crescent and a cross and is made of steel. The 124.000 medals will be pressed in the ground, and together they form the trail network on the peninsula. Averagely there will be one medal every two meters, which makes it easy to follow the trail. While walking, one will be overwhelmed by the enormous amount of casualties: the abstract number becomes real and tangible.
The medal is open, so it can be pressed in any surface: tarmac, concrete, clay, sand. Over time, small plants will start to grow in the openings of the medal, and nature becomes part of the symbol. On green surfaces, concrete will be used to stabilize the medal, and making sure that after time the medal will stay visible.
The medal will be also become the symbol of the peninsula, used in other forms of communication.

Focal Points
Each memorial site is unique and tells its own part of the total story. They can best be described as an ensemble of elements individually can be found on many memorial sites, but always in a different form and configuration. The elements are: memorial, burial, plaquette, parking, shops, square, road, path. Since the shape and position of many of the elements is fixed, and only some elements can be moved or transformed, it is not possible to create more coherence and recognisability in the ensemble. What can be done, is shaping the connections in a recognisable way: the paths that connect the different elements.

A recognisable path network is laid out slightly sunken, accompanied by corroded steel edges, wild flowers, signs and other elements. The sunken path brings visitors closer to the earth of the landscape, and creates a focus on the route ahead, while paths in the surroundings stay unrevealed. It creates a 1 on 1 relation with the landscape. The earth that is excavated to lower the path is put at the sides, creating a soft scratch in the surface of the landscape. The paths are never steep, and accessible for wheelchairs. Therefore on sloped terrain the paths make sharp angles, increasing the length of the path and the distance between the different memorials. Along the track, wild flowers are sown, selected to blossom when the ceremonies take place.

When possible, parking is placed more at a distance, and a gathering space is introduced before entering the memorial site. When the space is available, more than one route is offered to reach the monument or the burial. In this way the visitors have a more individual experience. By applying these basic principles on each site, a different scratch pattern is created; recognisable by its material but unique in its trajectory.

Additional elements like lamp posts, sign posts and bins all have a very quiet and minimal design, with corroded steel and concrete as their two main components. These colours will blend in the landscape in a natural way.