The Daisy Memorial Analysis

For my conceptual memorial I decided to pay a homage to both the fallen American soldiers in Vietnam, and the American citizens back on the homefront promoting peace and an end to the war. During the war, America had been involved in direct combat from 1961 all through till their defeat in 1975. During this time of direct-involvement over 50,000 troops met their end, and back home an outpour of emotion and sorrow was displayed. American citizens were no longer in approval of the war, and so began an era of the promotion of peace and love. Without this intense amount of protest by “hippies” and the heavy feel of anti-American involvement in the war, it is possible that many more American lives could have been lost. It is this promotion of peace
I have chosen to use the flower as a way of portraying the “hippie” movement of the 1960’s, in order to truly depict how necessary all of the protests and promotions of peace were to ending the war. At the time, a slogan called “Flower Power” had become widely recognized as symbol of passive resistance and anti-violence ideologies. Protesters would offer policeman flowers, all in hopes of showing the American government how important it was to end the violence in the Vietnam, and show them how to accept peace and love. Specifically, the daisy flower is to be used in the memorial because during this time of “Flower Power,” daisies had become almost signatory, as many protesters were using these flowers as symbols of their hopes and ideologies. Along with this relation, the daisy flower is a common symbol of both love and transformation, a perfect way to describe what America had to go through during the Vietnam war times. Essentially, The daisy flower would be used to symbolize the significance and importance of protest against the Vietnam war, and the promotion of peace. The second architectural detail is the small but noticeable water droplets, one on each side of the stem. These drops are more than simply aesthetic, as they hold a homage to the fallen American soldiers. I chose to use theses droplets of water as some kind of depiction of aftermath, the aftermath of a storm, which in this case would be the war. The droplets portray the lives of the soldiers, and how those lives are to now slowly fade away, and once again become simply a part of history. They show the pure sadness that the American public was feeling during the war times, in a way portraying their feelings for their lost loved ones. These droplets can be interpreted as either rain drops from a storm, depicting how lives were lost during a storm that was the Vietnam war, or the tears