Buckingham Palace Portion May Open To Public With Proposed Queen Elizabeth Park

Architects are proposing for a park to bloom in memory of the late Queen Elizabeth II. While many royal family members, living and dead, have received areas and monuments dedicated to them, this new memorial is taking a step out of tradition and is asking for something pretty radical to be done. 

 
Envisioned by writer Stefan Simanowitz and architect Antonio Pisanò, the plan looks at taking a sliver of the gardens of Buckingham Palace and making it accessible to the public. 

The palace gardens currently cover 42 acres in the heart of busy London. The proposal wants to take a small section along Grosvernor Place road. Besides giving the people a place to remember the Queen, the svelte space is also meant to be a natural sanctuary, a reprieve for the public in one of the most polluted parts of the city. 
 
The memorial gardens scheme also outlines features to keep the public away from the private grounds. Currently, a wall encloses the palace, and instead of taking the barrier down, arches have been suggested to be placed for entry. At the same time, a separate high-security fence to cordon off the area will be put in place to prevent people from wandering around the zone. However, the exact dimensions of the memorial park have yet to be determined. 

Currently, the only way to visit the palace grounds is through scheduled paid guided tours during the summer months. 
 
From the renders on the project’s website, it looks like the space is meant to be an overgrown garden filled with lush bushes and flowers, almost like a meadow that has a pathway carved into it.  

The proposal was first presented to the palace in 2015, and the assistant of the then-Prince Charles wrote back to the team stating that the king was now interested in learning more about the idea. The plan then shifted for the Queen’s Jubilee; since her passing, it is now being proposed as a memorial park. 

The Queen already has a garden in her name, the Queen Elizabeth II Olympic Park in east London. However, the team has pictured a place where people can be as close to her as they can by walking in an area where she would have once walked. 
 
 
 
[via Dezeen and Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Gardens, images via Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Gardens]