In the early morning of July 28, 1976 an 8.2 Richter scale earthquake shattered the industrial city of Tangshan, China. The natural disaster leveled the densely populated city over a 4 kilometer radius claiming thousands as they slept. In its wake 85% of Tangshan’s poorly constructed and non-earthquake resistant buildings, in particular the vast number of densely populated reinforced concrete residential barracks, lay in ruin. Those that survived the initial earthquake but remained trapped under rubble did not survive the aftershock that arrived 16 hours later. Over 255,000 lives were lost in what is believed to be the largest earthquake of the 20th century by death toll.

unEarthed is a finalist entry selected from over three hundred submissions in an International Design Competition for the Tangshan Earthquake Memorial and Park. The memorial is imagined as a shattered luminous landscape and is inscribed in the foundations of the earthquake’s largest ruin, the Tangshan Rolling Stock Plant. Adjacent is the ruined foundations of factories and residential barracks now empty and sown with flowers. Memorial and ruins rest in a now protected 40 hectare industrial park being reclaimed by nature.

The hard quartzite skin of the memorial is shattered and heaved revealing crevices that descend into the earth. Its luminous temperament glitters in the sunlight by day, and lights up and shimmers in the moonlight by night. This ethereal quality of the luminous skin recalls the inexpressible and intangible feeling of losing loved ones, yet its constant presence serves as guide and comfort for visitors to descend and emerge from the memorial. The narrow crevices are accessed from multiple locations. Broken beams and fallen columns, once strewn like lifeless forms in the aftermath, now line the crevices as pavers and retaining walls holding the earth at bay. The journey through the crevices detaches the visitor from their everyday surroundings preparing them for the plaza at the epicenter of the memorial.

The memorial’s luminous quartzite skin seamlessly morphs into a multitude of niches that cascade down the perimeter of the memorial plaza. The remembrance niches are void - unmarked and unnamed. They recall the countless lost but also pay homage to those that remain missing and unidentified to this day. Families mourn and place individual tributes that fill the void niches beginning the first steps towards healing and recovery. At the center of the open plaza rests a massive memorial slab lowered into the earth. On top of one edge of the slab is engraved the date and time of the event, “July 28, 1976 : 2:42am”; and on the other the number of lives lost “255,000”. The singular slab recalls the one event that unified the lives of those lost. It is placed at a depth just slightly out of reach reminding visitors and loved ones of a journey they cannot follow. The memorial slab and remembrance niches evoke the Chinese tradition of burial, cremation and paying homage.

The design explores the potential of memorials as a place of remembrance and healing, and of inspiration and hope. Specifically, it looks at how architectural space can be sculpted to facilitate the healing of individuals and the community while honoring the memory of those lost through the experience of form, light and landscape.