A team led by the architect Norman Foster and also including the British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare has won the competition to design a national memorial to Queen Elizabeth II in St James’s Park, central London. The proposal was selected from a shortlist of five concepts.
The winning design encompasses a “tranquil family” of royal gardens linked by a natural stone path. Within this setting, Shonibare’s Wind Sculpture will be a “space for reflection and shared experience”, says a project statement.
The design by Foster + Partners also includes a new bridge that will replace the existing Blue Bridge that spans the lake in St James’s Park. The new walkway, which features a cast-glass balustrade, is inspired by the Queen Mary fringe tiara worn by Elizabeth II on her wedding day in 1947.
The project also incorporates new figurative sculptures of the late Queen alongside her husband Prince Philip at Birdcage Walk, a Prince Philip gate and a main monument to Elizabeth II to be built beside the Mall.
One of the figurative sculptures within the design
© Foster + Partners
The Foster + Partners team, which also includes the landscape designer Michael Desvigne, will develop its concept in partnership with the Queen Elizabeth Memorial Committee.
“They will work together to select a sculptor to design the memorial’s figurative element,” says the project statement, adding that “the committee will announce the sculptor later this year”. The final design will be formally announced in April 2026; no date has been set for the unveiling.
Panellists on the Queen Elizabeth Memorial Committee include Sandy Nairne, the former director of the National Portrait Gallery in London, and the historian Anna Keay.
The memorial will be paid for with public funds. “As a national memorial to the country’s longest-serving and much-respected monarch, the government has identified a provisional construction budget of £23m-£46m excluding VAT for the project,” a UK government statement says.
Shonibare recently launched his first major solo exhibition on the African continent, Safiotra [Hybridities], at the Fondation H in Antananarivo, Madagascar. In 2023, he appeared on The Art Newspaper podcast A Brush With…
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