Latin American architecture firm Gómez Platero has unveiled a design for a circular monument in Uruguay to remember coronavirus victims.

The proposed World Memorial to the Pandemic is a large sculpture designed to be installed on water off the coast of Uruguay.

Learn more about the proposed sculpture here.

Learn about other, innovative ways in which victims of this and this and other pandemics have been commemorated here.

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, also known as the Holocaust Memorial, is a memorial in Berlin to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, designed by architect Peter Eisenman. It consists 2,711 concrete slabs or "stelae", arranged in a grid pattern, with cobbled walkways between them.

Eisenman himself wrote that the stelae are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture seeks to represent an ordered system that has lost touch with human reason.  The monument has been controversial, with some people feeling it is too impersonal (it has no inscriptions of victims' names, for instance), and others being critical that it only commemorates Jewish victims of Nazi persecution and not others.  In its first year, swastikas (Nazi symbols) were painted on the stelae on five occasions.

Learn more about the Berlin Holocaust Memorial here.  

Related Reading: Learn more about "Yolocaust" - a term coined for the questionable behaviours of some visitors at this memorial and others. 

The memorial to the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center is a thought-provoking combination of built and natural elements.  It was conceived to commemorate the 2,977 people who died when two planes crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center on 11th September 2001, as well as the six who lost their lives in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.  

It consists of a bronze parapet with laser-cut names of victims surrounding a 30-foot high waterfall enclosure of steel, marble and concrete.  These are located in a memorial site with over 460 planted trees.

The architect who designed the memorial tells the story of its creation here.

Through the middle years of the 20th century, the former Soviet Union saw the construction of some of the largest and most imposing statues and monuments in the world, glorifying Soviet leaders - in particular Lenin and Stalin - and celebrating all aspects of life under Communist rule, from collective farming and national industrial effort, to the early successes of manned space flight.  Today, these triumphalist monuments celebrating a past regime divide opinion across post-Communist and post-Soviet society.  While many monuments remain as a vivid reminder of the country's history, others have been toppled in protest or quietly dismantled.

Discover the fate of some of these monuments here.

The Memorial to Enslaved Laborers at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville commemorates 4,000 enslaved men, women and children who were involved in building or maintaining the university during its first 40 years.  The design team held meetings with the community to consult with them on the location and design of the monument.  The result is a walled circle of stone nestling in the earth, inscribed with names of known individuals who were enslaved, as well as blank lines for names that research has yet to reveal.  After a rain shower, water that has collected in the inscriptions runs down the stone wall like tears.

Read more on the Memorial here.  

The Commando Memorial is a Category A listed monument in Lochaber, Scotland, dedicated to the men of the original British Commando Forces raised during World War II. Situated around a mile from Spean Bridge, it overlooks the training areas of the Commando Training Depot established in 1942 at Achnacarry Castle. Unveiled in 1952 by the Queen Mother, it is one of Scotland’s best-known monuments, both as a war memorial and as a tourist attraction offering views of Ben Nevis and Aonach Mòr.

Learn more about the Commando Memorial here. 

The Oklahoma City National Memorial was completed in 2001 to commemorate the 168 victims of the bombing of a Federal building in 1995.  It comprises 168 bronze and stone chairs with translucent glass bases that honour each victim individually.  It was designed by Hans and Torrey Butzer and Sven Berg.

The chairs are arranged in nine rows, representing the nine floors of the building that was attacked.  Each individual's chair is placed in the row the corresponds to the floor they worked on.

Photosensors are installed so that the chairs start to glow as darkness falls, turning them, in the words of the designers, into "168 beacons of hope".

Learn about this and other elements of the memorial site here.

The Steilneset Memorial in Vardø  is a striking memorial, located on an island in the far north-east of Norway, designed by architect Peter Zumthor to commemorate suspected witches who were burned at the stake there in the area in the 17th century.  It comprises two structures, one designed by Zumthor and a second housing an installation by the Franco-American artist Louise Bourgeois.

Zumthor's structure comprises a fabric cocoon suspended inside a pine scaffolding framework.  Inside the cocoon is a corridor floored in oak, along the length of which light bulbs hang behind 91 windows to represent each person who was put to death during the witch trials.

The second structure houses a sculpture by Bourgeois that takes the form of a steel chair through which a perpetual flame burns, surrounded by seven mirrors, like judges around the accused.

Learn more about the Steilneset Memorial here.

In June 2012, 49 people were killed and 53 injured in a shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida.  The site now hosts a temporary memorial to the victims - but this is set to be replaced by a multi-million dollar monument that will encapsulate the damaged remains of the original building.  A white, circular canopy will wrap the building and will provide covered seating for visitors, among 49 trees planted for the victims.  

However, the planned monument has divided opinions among the victims' families and the wider public.

Learn more here.