Jefferson School African American Heritage Center (JSAAHC) announced that Model of Architecture Serving Society’s (MASS) design, Rooted, was selected to replace the statue of confederate general, Robert E. Lee on Market Street Park in Charlottesville, Virginia. The announcement coincides with the fifth anniversary of the monument’s removal from the park.
MASS beat out two other finalists in the design competition, firms Hood Design Studio and PUSH. The initiative, Swords into Plowshares, was subject to a public voting and public engagement process launched in March, in which locals reviewed the three finalist proposals and rank-choice voted for their preference. ROOTED was the first-choice selection for 64 percent of voters. For the sculpture, MASS enlisted the help of figurative sculptor Dana King too.
“We wanted to find a concept that spoke to this persistence from the Black community, from the African American Charlottesvillian community, to say, ‘We will not be denied. We will be rooted here,’” said Jha D Amazi, principal of MASS’s Public Memory and Memorials Lab. Rooted re-forges the smelted bronze remains of the Robert E. Lee statue into the trunks of a 27-foot-tall Baobab tree. The trunks situate themselves in a round, encouraging visitors to find community within it.
MASS’s Public Memory and Memorials division worked on the design. The arm of the firm designs memorials, monuments, and public spaces that explore public memory as a tool for justice and healing. It is no stranger to large bronze envelopes either, as with Embrace, a 2021 project honoring Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King, Jr.
The project to replace the maligned monument in Charlottesville, has been a fraught decade-in-the-making. It has been nearly 10 years since the removal of the statue of confederate general Robert E. Lee was voted on in Charlottesville, instigating a deadly white-nationalist unite the right rally. The statue was removed in 2021 and in 2023 its bronze was melted down to be reused in the forthcoming sculpture.
“My hope is that in a few years, the park will be full of laughter and playfulness, conversations and dancing. Because then, ROOTED will have done what it was intended to do—bring all kinds of people together in comfort, creating something we can all be wildly proud of,” said King.
