MOSCOW, Idaho — Inside the 'Arts and Architecture South' building on the University of Idaho campus in Moscow, students are working on the final designs for the Vandal Healing Garden and Memorial. It's a process students have devoted nearly 12 hours a day to working on for the last six months.
“We took on this project with the understanding that we were carrying the heart of the university, and each of those students takes that responsibility very seriously,” Associate Professor Scott Lawrence said. He has helped guide the students through the design process over the last year.
The garden was announced in the wake of the murders of four students in their off-campus home on Nov.13, 2022. The loss of Xana Kernodle, Ethan Chapin, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves shocked the tight-knit community to its core.
Hundreds came together to mourn their deaths at a vigil in the Kibbie Dome. Family, friends and strangers all gathered to support each other through their immediate grief. While the vigil was a necessary step in the healing journey, the university soon realized the need for a permanent place for students to grieve past and future Vandals who would never make it to graduation.
“The idea that grief, mourning, healing, it's all nonlinear,” said Jade Fredericks, a fourth-year architecture major. “Everybody experiences it in very different ways along a very different timeline.”
The university tasked the College of Art & Architecture students studying landscape design and architecture to begin drafting designs for the memorial.
“This needs to be a space that works for future tragedies,” Lawrence said. “You could hire a professional to do this but in this case, we feel, to actually do what we're trying to do it needs to be the students."
As one of its first steps, the university sought the input of the community, asking for their ideas for the Vandal Healing Garden. They hosted a design charrette, where they asked a series of questions to help guide their vision.
“We wanted to make sure that this project was a result of listening,” Lawrence said. "If anybody's going to understand what Vandals need, it's Vandals.”
The class began in the fall of 2023, talking to experts on suicide prevention, and healing gardens to determine how to design a welcoming safe space for people to explore heavy emotions. Friends and family members were invited to speak to the students about their loved ones.
“The families were very positive,” Fredericks said. "They wanted to express that their children that they lost were vibrant people. That really changed, I think, the tone that we were putting into the project and how we really wanted to represent these people.”
Quickly, the class narrowed down a location for the garden along the academic lawn backed up to the Shattuck Arboretum. Lawrence explained that the Arboretum was already a place students on campus would go when they needed to process their emotions alone, but being heavily wooded, it was not the safest space.
Fredericks explained they selected a site in the heart of campus with a hillside that would let people take in the garden from above as well as below. Another factor that influenced their selection of the site was sunshine.
“Our memorial space is kind of in this more sunlit spot. That can really be impacted by the sun and bring a little bit of that energy into that space,” Fredericks said, looking across the mall, bright orange lawn markers forming the outline of the memorial.
“I've imagined coming back and seeing what it's like later,” said David Wester, a fourth-year architecture major. “It's uplifting, but it's a space that's not sad like most typical memorials are.”
Over the past six months, the students have been diligently working on design. Each of them will likely draw the same lines hundreds of times for each line in the design. They present their ideas to the class multiple times a day in hopes of getting them just right.
The university is keeping the finalized design under wraps until the official unveiling later this year. Wester explained that it will be heavily influenced by pathways so that people can get lost in their own thoughts while moving through the space.
Lawrence says they take every inch of the garden into account, facing delays along the way. The day before the class spoke to KREM 2, they learned that the location they were set to build the memorial had a gas pipeline underneath the ground, creating yet another challenge for the students to solve before they would break ground.
After the design is complete, it will be the students who undertake the construction with the help of landscape architects later this year. No date has been set for when they will break ground.
“We're the ones that are actually building it," Lawrence said. “It changes the way you think about design because you're not just handing a series of drawings off and somebody builds it. You need to think about how you would actually do it.”
Fredericks is excited to take on the challenge. She plans on staying at the University of Idaho for graduate school and shared that she’s eager to watch people interact with the space she’s devoted so much time to.
“I hope they feel embraced. And like they matter,” Fredericks said. "It's okay to feel grief, it's okay to feel distraught by things that are going on in your life, but you're not alone. You have people all around you on this campus that can help you and are here for you if you need it.”
If you would like to donate to the healing garden fund, click here.
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