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the NYC a ids M E M OR I A L B Y HYEON JEONG P ARK
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
table of contents
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Information of The NYC AIDS Memorial
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WHO (Chairman & Co-Founders)
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Timeline
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WHY (The Reason Why It Was Built)
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Location
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Design
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Song Of Myself
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About Trajan Pro Regular
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Gill Sans MT Condensed
THE NYC AIDS MEMORIAL
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AIDS MEMORIAL IN NEW YORK CITY
The NYC AIDS Memorial honors more than 100,000 New Yorkers who died of AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome). It also recognizes the contributions of caregivers and activists who mobilized to provide care for the ill, fight discrimination, lobby for medical research, and alter the drug approval process, effectively changing the trajectory of the epidemic. The Memorial aims to inspire and empower current and future activists, health professionals, and people living with HIV (human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS) in the continuing mission to eradicate the disease.
the LGBT Community Center on 13th Street, where ACT-UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) and other AIDS advocacy and support groups first organized. It is also within blocks of the first headquarters of Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), and the former office of Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, who pioneered community-based research trials for AIDS drugs. His co-op board’s attents to evict him led to the nation’s first AIDS anti discrimination case in 1983. Many consider the Memorial’s location as the symbolic epicenter of the epidemic and the mobilization against it.
The Memirial sits on a trianular site that was most recently part of the former St. Vincent’s Hospital campus. Following the closing of the hospital in 2010, a public park was designed for the site through a community review process. The new park was constructed by the Rudin Management Company as part of the conversion of the hospital into a residential development and given to the City of New York in 2017.
The Memorial’s white triangular steel sculpture, central fountain, and benches were desighed by studio ai architects, selected through an international design competition. Renowned visual artist Jenny Holzer chose and arranged passages from “Song of Myself” (1855), poet Walt Whitman’s transcendent celebration of hope, unity, and human degnity, which are engraved in the Memorial’s granite pavement. The Memorial is a place of contemplation and provides a shelter for refletion and remembrance of the men, women, and children lost to AIDS. It also serves as a gathering place and reminder of the work that remains to defeat the disease. The memorial was dedicated on World AIDS Day, December 1, 2016.
This Park was selected as the site for the AIDS Memorial because it sits at a unique crossroads in early AIDS history in New York City. The earlieast documented AIDS cases, first reported in 1981, disproportionately affected the gay male population, which had large communities in the surrounding West Village and Chelsea neighborhoods. As a result of the number of ill patientsfilling the beds and hallways of the hospital, in 1984 St. Vincent’s established the first AIDS ward in the city and second in the nation. The Memorial site is less than a block from
The NYC AIDS Memorial organization is a 501(c)(3) corporation that developed the memorial and supports the ongoing maintenance and educational programming for the space. For more information and to support this endeavor, please visit nycaidsmemorial.org.
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who
CHAIRMAN Keith Fox
Keith Fox is CEO of Phaidon Press. He currently serves on the boards of the National Building Museum, New York University’s Center for Publishing Media and E-builder.
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WHO
Co-Founder Christopher Tepper
Chris is currently a Senior Project Manager at the Hudson Companies. He previously worked at Jamestown, the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation and the New York City Economic Development Corporation.
Co-Founder Paul Kelterborn
Paul works as Director of Design Innovation for Time Equities, Inc. His prior experience includes working at Jamestown, the Municipal Art Society of New York and in business development for architecture and urban design firms. He also co-founded the Hudson River Powerhouse Group.
THE NYC AIDS MEMORIAL
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TIMELINE
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TIMELINE
1981
Drs. Michael S. Gottlieb, Joel D. Weisman, et al., report five cases of homosexual men with Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, a rare form of pneumonia usually found only in severely immunosuppressed patients. The report is published in the June 5, 1981, issue of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).
1984
In Science, a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Dr. Robert Gallo of the U.S. National Cancer Institute reports that his lab has isolated the virus believed to cause AIDS. He calls it human T-cell lymphotropic virus type III. At the University of California, San Francisco, Dr. Jay A. Levy reports the isolation of a retrovirus from U.S. AIDS patients and healthy individuals in risk groups. He calls it the AIDS-associated virus (ARV).
1987
Approved in record time, zidovudine (AZT) becomes the first anti-HIV drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The CDC launches a new nationwide public information campaign, “America Responds to AIDS.” Researchers realize that virtually all cases of HIV infection ultimately lead to full-blown AIDS, but only after a long incubation period.
1992
The FDA issues new rules that allow accelerated approval of new AIDS drugs based on “surrogate markers” of their efficacy, such as laboratory tests, rather than long-term clinical outcomes such as the relief of symptoms or prevention of disability and death.
1995
AIDS deaths in the U.S. reach an all-time high. The New York Times reports that AIDS has become the leading cause of death among all Americans ages 25 to 44. Between 1991 and 1995, the number of American women diagnosed with AIDS increased by more than 63%.
1997
AIDS patients continue to live longer thanks to the new anti-HIV therapies, dubbed drug “cocktails,” and AIDS deaths in the U.S. decline by 42%. But the number of new HIV infections among Americans has remained constant at about 40,000 annually since 1992. amfAR launches targeted grant initiatives to design a safe and effective AIDS vaccine and develop methods of restoring immune system function in people infected with HIV. President Clinton calls for the development of an AIDS vaccine by 2007.
1999
T-20, one of a new class of anti-HIV drugs called “fusion inhibitors,” begins clinical trials. Efforts are also under way to develop related “binding inhibitors,” many of which target the CCR5 co-receptor discovered by amfAR grantee Dr. Nathaniel Landau.
2000
Dr. Mathilde Krim is awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her leadership in creating the AIDS Medical Foundation in 1983 and amfAR in 1985, and her commitment to the fight against AIDS. UNAIDS reports that 36.1 million people are now living with HIV/AIDS, over 13 million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS, and nearly 22 million people have died of AIDS-related causes since the epidemic began.
2003
T-20, or Fuzeon, first tested by amfAR researcher Dr. Carl Wild, is approved by the FDA, offering new hope to thousands of patients who are resistant to other anti-HIV drugs. UNAIDS and the World Health Organization announce the ‘3 by 5’ Initiative aimed at providing antiretroviral treatment to 3 million people worldwide by 2005.
2005
Kenneth Cole, KNOW HIV/AIDS, a joint public education initiative of Viacom Inc. and the Kaiser Family Foundation, and amfAR launch a new AIDS awareness campaign, “We All Have AIDS,” to reduce the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS. A new report released by the World Health Organization and UNAIDS shows that the number of people on HIV antiretroviral treatment in developing countries has more than tripled since 2003 to 1.3 million.
2009
At a landmark conference on Capitol Hill, amfAR issues a Call to Action urging the federal government to overhaul its approach to HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment delivery, and research. The U.S. House of Representatives lifts the 20-year ban on federal funding for syringe exchange programs.
2011
Founding International amfAR Chairman Elizabeth Taylor dies at 79 and is remembered around the world for her pioneering contributions to the fight against HIV/AIDS. A landmark research study shows that putting healthy people living with HIV on antiretrovirals can limit their transmission of the virus by 96 percent.
THE NYC AIDS MEMORIAL
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WHY
Until now, over 35 years into the fight against AIDS, there was no highly visible public memorial recognizing those we lost and the extraordinarily heroic effort of caregivers and activists who helped change the trajectory of the epidemic. Even though New York City alone lost more than 100,000 men, women and children to AIDS and the global activist response to the epidemic started here, the history of the disease in New York City is all but invisible: the loss and devastation, the government indifference, the community’s unprecedented response. This memorial is intended both to honor and acknowledge the past and – as the AIDS crisis is far from over – energize and inspire current and future generations of activists, caregivers and people living with HIV.
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WHY
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WHY HERE
The memorial sits at the gateway to a new public park adjacent to the former St. Vincent’s Hospital, which housed the City’s first and lar gest AIDS ward, is often considered the symbolic epicenter of the disease, and which figures prominently in The Normal Heart, and Angels in America, and other important pieces of literature and art that tell the story of the plague years in New York. The park site is also less than a block from the LGBT Community Center on 13th Street, where ACT-UP and other AIDS advocacy/support groups first organized, and it sits within blocks of the first headquarters of GMHC and the office of a doctor on W. 12th Street that Lambda Legal successfully prevented from being evicted for treating early AIDS patients. Furthermore, the site is highly visible, accessible and surrounded by amenities for visitors. For all these reasons, New York City officially named the new park that houses the memorial the “New York City AIDS Memorial Park at St. Vincent’s Triangle” which becomes the first significant public space in the City dedicated to the AIDS plague.
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WHY HERE
DESIGN
In conjunction with Architectural Record and Architizer, the NYC AIDS Memorial launched an international design competition in November 2011, chaired by Michael Arad, the designer of the National September 11 Memorial, to generate ideas for the memorial park design. Nearly 500 architects from around the world submitted designs. Studio ai, Studio ai, led by Mateo Paiva, Lily Lim and Esteban Erlich, won the competition to become the park’s architect. Their design features an 18-foot steel canopy as the dramatic gateway to the new St. Vincent’s Hospital Park in the West Village. The NYC AIDS Memorial also features the work of world-renowned visual artist Jenny Holzer. The engraved granite pavers includes sections from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself. The Memorial also includes a central granite water feature and benches and will serve as the gateway to the new park.
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DESIGN
THE NYC AIDS MEMORIAL
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SONG OF MYSELF BY WART WHITMAN
I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death. Creeds and schools in abeyance, Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten, I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check with original energy.
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SONG OF MYSELF
THE NYC AIDS MEMORIAL
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TRAJAN PRO REGULAR
BRATE THE NYC AIDS MEMORIAL
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TRAJAN TYPEFACE
Trajan is a serif typeface designed in 1989 by Carol Twombly for Adobe. The design is based on the letterforms of capitalis monumentalis or Roman square capitals, as used for the inscription at the base of Trajan’s Column from which the typeface takes its name. Trajan is an all-capitals typeface, as the Romans did not use lower-case letters. Twombly created the design taking inspiration from a full-size picture of a rubbing of the inscription. It is well known for appearing on many movie posters.
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TRAJAN TYPEFACE / BACKGROUND
BACKGROUND OF TRAJAN
A drawing and photographed carving of the “Trajan” capitals on the Column of Trajan made by Eric Gill in the early twentieth century. The capitals on the Column of Trajan have long been an inspiration to many artists and students of lettering. The calligrapher and type designer Edward Johnston in his book Writing & Illuminating & Lettering (1906) wrote that “the Roman capitals have held the supreme place among letters for readableness and beauty. They are the best forms for the grandest and most important inscriptions.” Twombly’s translation of the Trajan inscription into type is quite crisp and faithful. Many looser interpretations (often with an invented lowercase) predate Twombly’s, particularly Emil Rudolf Weiss’ “Weiss” of 1926, Frederic Goudy’s 1930 “Goudy Trajan,” while Warren Chappell’s “Trajanus” of 1939, while having similar forms for capitals has a markedly medieval lowercase. Many other examples of lettering and typefaces are based on Roman capitals, for instance lettering made under the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.Alastair Johnston’s early review of Trajan noted this heritage, saying that it “outdoes anything old Fred Goudy ever produced.” Twombly’s digitisation of Trajan has become very popular, as seen in its nearly constant presence on movie posters, television shows and book covers. Twombly retired from Adobe and type design in 1999, but Adobe has continued to release versions in consultation with her.The current OpenType release of Trajan is “Trajan Pro 3” and features a lower-case of small caps.Adobe has also released a “Trajan Sans” companion face, forming a font superfamily. Trajan letterforms have been used for many years for signs in British public buildings, including government offices. Although other lettering is often used now, examples of Trajan signage can be seen at the entrances to the Houses of Parliament in London. Trajan also appears on the title card of the television series The West Wing.
THE NYC AIDS MEMORIAL
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GILL SANS MT CONDENSED
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GILL SANS MT CONDENSED
SELECTION S FR O M S O NG OF M YSELF BY WALT WHI TM A N SIL MA N FIS HER M A R A NT Z STONE
THE NYC AIDS MEMORIAL
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