The memorial to the fallen in recent wars is quite literally a rendition of the fallen soldier. The architectural idea creates a series of monumental stone plates that incorporate the names of the martyred on their surface. The composition of plates is seen in dynamic collision. Some are fallen; some are in the process of falling; some supporting the other.

MEMORIAL TO THE FALLEN: Competition Entry for the National War Memorial - Stage 1 by Gautam Bhatia In Global Design Competition for National War Memorial and Museum. New Delhi, 2016.
MEMORIAL TO THE FALLEN: Competition Entry for the National War Memorial - Stage 1 by Gautam Bhatia In Global Design Competition for National War Memorial and Museum. New Delhi, 2016. © Gautam Bhatia

A comprehension of the conventions of gravity – the erect, leaning, inclining, collapsing plates create a visible disturbance in space, generally understood in rectilinear terms as vertical walls and horizontal floors. The psychological and unsettling imbalance of a battlefield – of soldiers in a state of war – standing, fighting, falling, dying is an unsentimental reminder of their collective belief in the protection of homeland, and so the unforgiving call of to self – sacrifice and martyrdom. The names of the dead are written chronologically on the angled plates. The visitor is able to walk between them, through space – often constricted narrow and confining – made in the accidental play between the leaning, falling plates. The idea of the severe confinement makes the visitor strain for clarity in the constantly changing theater of the memorial. The falling plates erase any definition of a clear pathway and access, and confounds the viewer into accidental moments of dark and light, leading into interpreting and contemplating the state of war itself, the nature of human valour, the fear of death........