Team Daoust
To learn more about the Monument, please visit the National Monument to Canada's Mission in Afghanistan page.
Images of the Design Concept
Team members
- Luca Fortin, public artist
- The Honourable Louise Arbour, strategic advisor
- Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker, architects, urban designers and landscape architects
Design intent
“There is a crack, a crack in everything - That’s how the light gets in”, a quote by Leonard Cohen that poetically inspired our conceptual approach.
For the formalization of the National Monument to Canada's Mission in Afghanistan, we are proposing an evocative remembrance wall, strategically opened by the passage of a symbolic axis of Canadian democracy, defined between the War Museum and the Peace Tower.
Intertwining the destiny of Ottawa and the Afghan cities, the monument echoes the limestone materiality of the Parliament buildings and the evocative power of the landscapes encountered abroad.
The lace-like stone at the heart of the framing wall offers multiple perspectives; seen from afar are the characteristic mountains of regions where Canadians played a prominent role. Up close, the framing refers to a view of the world through the magnified motif of a burqa, a view opened up by the axis of democracy.
Transcript of the National Monument to Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan Team Daoust video
Video length: 1:30 minutes
The visual elements are photographs and 3D animation.
[Soft music playing]
[Text on screen: The National Monument to Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan
Luca Fortin/Louise Arbour/Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker
Public art/human rights/urban design/landscape architecture/architecture]
[Photographs of Canadian Mission in Afghanistan]
Voice of The Honorable Louise Arbour: “Fighting for democracy and human rights represents one if not the noblest cause particularly for the Canadian Armed Forces. Each war has its own specificity, and the Afghan journey presented a challenging geographic war theatre, revealed a complex society hardened by decades of conflicts, with shockingly unequal rights for women.
Through the help of our Canadian Armed Forces, the mission opened the door for democratic principles to spread throughout the Afghan world, this is undoubtedly a page of history to remember.”
[Conceptual rendering of the remembrance wall lit up against a night sky]
Voice of The Honorable Louise Arbour: “There is a crack, a crack in everything - That’s how the light gets in”, the quote by Leonard Cohen poetically inspired our conceptual approach.”
[Rendering of close-up view of light coming through the remembrance wall creating shadows on ground]
[Rendering of overhead view of remembrance wall with surrounding plaza and landscaping]
Voice of The Honorable Louise Arbour: “As such, the National Monument to Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan is formalized by a remembrance and evocative wall, strategically opened by the symbolic Canadian democratic axis between the War Museum and the Peace Tower.”
[Renderings of remembrance wall, one with Canadian War Museum in the background, the other the Peace Tower]
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