europe from a great evil and two terms as president of the united states are events through which i lived. i hate to say this, mr. chairman. but i was actually walking and not crawling at that time. but what about our rising generations who lacked this firsthand historical memory? what will they know if anything about this great american? to teach them not only about ike and his deeds, but to give them a sense of his greatness and the debt we owe him is the task of any monument worthy of bearing his name. this mission is admirably summarized in the 1999 law passed by congress ordering that, quote, an appropriate memorial to dwight d. eisenhower should be created to perpetuate his memory and his contributions to the united states, unquote. such a monument should, therefore, memorialize and educate. in the execution of these tasks, the gehry propose all not only fails, but fails utterly. i say this for many reasons, but mainly because a unifying narrative, a story, if you will,
and the commemorative works act. in our experience, the subjects of memorials can provoke strong emotional responses because while many may agree on the value of commemorating a particular person or event, they may not all agree on the form that commemoration should take. the direction provided by the congress in the come memive works has has been help in guiding decision making in determining both the location and the design of memorials. in the case of the eisenhower memorial, these federal agencies are the national park service on behalf of the department of the inte interior, the national capital planning commission and the commission on fine arts. the process is a rigorous and sometimes lengthy public process which can require multiple consultations on the selection of a site and on the design of a commemorative work as the design concept undergoes refinement as well as extensive environmental and historic preservation compliance. the national park service works closely
layering of colors that will create new patterns. the smaller detailed elements are those that i was alluding disturb alluding to earlier. they re very settle and we ll get them more closely in detail. do you have any questions at this point? because this is the slide that shows the full design. looks like there s no questions. ok. you can come back if you like. there is a 3-d rendering. again, as i mentioned, the steel white beams, the columns, they re going to tie the white pattern of the victorian ties into these steel beams. on top of that, again, are the garden elements. we worked really hard both the france arts commission, the gdpa, as well as the pcpa architecture firm to choose the colors here so that it really would feel very warm and inviting as people move in and out of this space, but even on a foggy san francisco day, it still feels sun lit in that you re in a laurel garden. another image that shows the visitors passing through. one of the things that was
linger and find rest. can i ask you something? yes. what are the things going up the stairs? in the previous side, director? no, in the symbols. oh, that s signage. the plate holder for signage where the transit operators are. that will be evolved as the project evolved, as more technologies come into play. it s just a place holder for you now. so this last slide shows a detail of it, so it makes it easier to talk about it. as you can tell, it s a very expansive design. so going back again, you ll see the elements of the poppies and the laurels intersecting and overlapping with these subtle patterns and icons. one thing i hope that you can see it in the printouts perhaps better is that i m really playing with the shifting of color. so as people are walking across the space, there s really a sense of movement, and it s not a stagnant floor, but something that feels alive. much as a garden would. i think it s going to reflect in the city park above as like i menti
elaborate computer control systems where you can choreograph the movement of water. in this fountain, there s no computer. it s a wonderfully simple system. there s just an ultra sonic censor, and these are the technology that was developed for detecting water level in big shipping vessels and water tanks and fluid tanks. it s basically a beam of ultra sound that bounces off a liquid level and senses the height of the liquid. and there s wonderful robust indestructible technology. these things are designed to put in some tanks where you never have to go get them and do anything to them again. so the idea is that in this ceiling, there s one of these censors every four feet, and as the buses drive through, when the beam gets interrupted by a bus, it opens the and opens the valve and lets water flow. so every censor is linked to the nozzle directly above it. i think there s 256 of these nozzles and censor arrays. that image there shows what the actual thing looks like. they l