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Client

Care Center Maria Ter Engelen Klerken

Design

Landscape Architects Andy Malengier BV

Memorial garden for children

The children who spend all their lives at the Maria Ter Engelen care center in Klerken usually do not live to be more than 30 to 35 years old. Every week the parents visit there. After their child dies, they continue to be drawn to this place. It has also become their home. The parents asked the care center if a contemplative memorial garden could be realized to commemorate their child there. The care center acceded to their request and commissioned me to create a design.

When the design was begun, the philosophical and mythological aspects of the garden were taken into account, as well as the letter of Oct. 19, 2004, handed to me. This contained the parents’ wishes of what the memorial garden should mean to them.

The realization of being in charge of the design of a place where the deceased children are remembered caused me to be very quiet for a moment. A non-mundane task with the desire for a non-mundane character. A silent cry for change in our profane world. Toward more inspiration, contemplation and awareness. The essential other side of our being needed to be fed back. The experience of peace, emptiness, involvement, beauty, comfort and hope had to be offered to the parents, brothers and sisters of the deceased children, as well as the staff and residents of the care center. An experience that is too much missed in our daily busy lives.

The design is a contemporary interpretation of the “Hortus Conclusus” and presents a strong spiritual message. Through walls, shielded from all the noise of the outside world, the parent can imagine himself very close to his child and obtain hope. Hope that through death his child will not have to find his way alone. A sculpture depicts a parent figure guiding the child through the water to the gateway to paradise. They are being taken care of.

At the performance, silent tears from the parents indicated to me that the real essence of the task was being achieved.

This design was created in the year 2006. Despite the enthusiastic reception from parents, it was never realized. To this day, I occasionally receive positive feedback through my website about the strength and hopefulness of this design. 17 years later, we in the office took the initiative to render this project photorealistic with these images as a result. After a recent site visit to Maria Ter Engelen in Klerken, I noticed that everything there has been built up. The site does not allow contemplation there. The design of the memorial garden was therefore placed in an imaginary birch forest.

Design