View from the nearby Lantern Tower, L. Monsaingeon, Nov. 2018

Pas-de-Calais (Northern France) – Built in less than a year’s time, the Mémorial International de Notre-Dame-de-Lorette was dedicated by French President François Hollande on November 11, 2014. Four years later, it was visited by President Emmanuel Macron on November 8, 2018, in the scope of World War I commemorations and in advance of the highly symbolic date of November 11th, which will mark the centennial of the end of the conflict which cost the lives of millions in Europe and beyond.

Photo Ludovic MARIN. AFP

Unparalleled both in terms of its size and its intent (commemorating no victory, the monument simply lists in strict alphabetical order the names of 600,000 combattants, friends or ennemies of yesterday, united in brotherhood by death), the Memorial of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette is described by the Élysée Palace’s press file as “the most emblematic monument constructed during the commemorative cycle of the Centennial.”

The worksite team, during removal of formworks on the cantilevered sections

… and at job site completion

The monument is a work by  architect Philippe Prost, with project management headed by Lucas Monsaingeon, architect and 2016 Richard Morris Hunt Fellow.

→ Follow this link to a conference by Lucas Monsaingeon on the Memorial, filmed at the French National Archives  

The Ring of Remembrance has received numerous prizes and distinctions in France and abroad, including the Prix de l’Équerre in 2014 and the ACI Excellence in Concrete Construction Award conferred by the American Concrete Institute in Philadelphia in 2016.