REBECA
MÉNDEZ

We are excited to announce that Tucson’s January 8th Memorial: The Embrace by Chee Salette and Rebeca Méndez won this year's CODAaward for public spaces!

CODAawards is an internationally acclaimed program that celebrates the projects that most successfully integrate commissioned art into interior, architectural, or public spaces. The CODAawards program honors the individuals and the teams whose collective imaginations create the public and private spaces that inspire us every day.

Tucson's January 8th Memorial: The Embrace project overview:

Ten years after the January 8, 2011 mass shooting at former U.S. representative Gabby Giffords’ congress on your corner event, a memorial honoring the victims, survivors, and first responders of the shooting opened in Tucson, Arizona. Carved into the landscape of downtown El Presidio park, surrounded by themed gardens, and buttressed by an earthen berm, a powder-coated pearlescent steel inner wall is etched with symbols that relate to the lives, interests, and values of the individuals present that day, as well as to the history of the land where the monument sits, the memorial thoughtfully reflects the salient personal and societal issues it engages. In 19 seconds a crazed gunman unleashed 33 bullets, leaving six dead and thirteen wounded, a city in mourning, and a country in shock. this felt like an attack on democracy itself. visual artist Rebeca Méndez, architect and landscape designer Tina Chee, and project architect Marc Salette collaborated masterfully to answer the community’s call for a place to mourn and remember, with an architectural embrace and a universal symbolic language, to create a common ground that transcends political posturing on gun violence and celebrates the shared value of life.

CODAaward 2021 for public spaces category
https://www.codaworx.com/projects/tucsons-january-8th-memorial-the-embrace/