Memorials have long been an important part of our built environments. In recent decades, there have been enormous changes in who and what we commemorate, and how. This increasing need for unique and sensitive memorials opens up new creative horizons for architects tasked with translating complex subjects and feelings into emotive spatial experiences that are as memorable as they are commemorative.

This book showcases 45 contemporary memorials dating from since the beginning of the 21st century. Hauntingly eloquent, or starkly confrontational, each example highlights the effectiveness of such structures in focusing society’s consciousness on important and diverse issues. From Argentina to New Zealand, Comoros to South Korea, the memorials represent a wide geographical spread, and each interacts in original and surprising ways with its context.

Interspersed with the memorials are interviews with leading international architects, including Carmody Groarke, MASS Design Group, Michael Arad, Moshe Safdie, Philippe Prost and others. Their words offer insights into how architects have given form to such abstract concepts as loss, love, permanence, peace, justice, hope and memory itself.

Michèle Woodger is an architecture and design journalist based in London. She writes for RIBA Journal and for C3 Magazine (where she is contributing editor) and has also written for Pulp, Eye Magazine, Forum Magazine and the Lettering and Commemorative Arts Trust. During her career at the RIBA she was awarded the Gordon Ricketts Memorial grant for her research into lettering in London’s memorial landscape. Tszwai So is an award-winning artist and architect from London. He is the founder of Spheron Architects, and a visiting lecturer at the University of Westminster. His notable memorial projects include the Belarusian Memorial Chapel in London and the Pan-European Memorial for Victims of Totalitarianism in Brussels. So's artworks are in the collections of the V&A museum and Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, and his art film E-motion-Al City, premiered at the Venice Biennale 2021.