Paper Doll Children’s Memorial

Memorial for Children, Royal Hospital for Women’s Park, Paddington.

The Paper Doll Children’s Memorial reflects on both the experience of loss and the experience of life.  While the cutout children symbolise loss and emptiness, the paper doll sculpture also celebrates childhood and play.

The childhood activity of cutting out simple figures from folded paper resonates as a symbol of childhood and play.  But at the same time they are symbols of life and its fragility.

The paper doll figures will be laser-cut from thin sheets of core-ten steel with panels roughly knee-height. The sculptures will weave through the design, the sheer number of panels of cut-out children reflecting the immensity and reality of losing a child.

At times the sculptures meander over the slope, softened by flowering daisies, while in other parts the sculptures stand as pure forms on a ground surface of decomposed granite, where a play of shadows will animate the park.

A grove of pink crepe myrtle trees planted to align with the existing secondary path strengthens the existing geometry of the park. In late spring and summer, the trees come into flower, the space aglow in pink blooms providing an overhead canopy to the proposed sandstone path and seating. In autumn and winter, the deciduous crepe myrtles let in sunlight, where the central paper doll sculpture casts its shadows of figures.

Beyond the crepe myrtles, a single jacaranda sits, balancing the design and framing the proposed access from the terrace gardens via sandstone steps.