Memorial for Diana a ‘Puddle’?

After nearly a year of acrimonious wrangling, a U.S. designer Wednesday won the hotly contested competition to design a fountain commemorating the late Princess Diana, in what one judge called “an appropriate memorial” and another called “a puddle.”

As their memorial to the people’s princess, killed in a car crash almost five years ago, Kathryn Gustafson of Seattle and her London partner, Neil Porter, propose a landscape feature of two ribbons of water running in an oval stone trough down a hill into a wide shallow pool.

The final decision on the $4.5-million-dollar memorial on the shores of the Serpentine lake in the middle of London’s Hyde Park came after months of squabbling over the 58 finalists.

The judging committee of eight friends and fellow charity workers of the princess, chaired by close companion Rosa Monckton, was divided over the Gustafson-Porter design and that of British architect Anish Kapoor, who proposed an avant-garde, dome-shaped fountain.

In the end, Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell stepped in to resolve the standoff and, in what she termed a “judgment of Solomon,” chose the quieter, more child-friendly of the two ideas.

The ribbon of water will encompass an area of about 300-by-160 feet as two shallow streams of varying widths, inviting children to splash about in hot weather or grown-ups to wander in calm contemplation.

In the words of Porter, the design reflects the character of the princess: “The oval is to show the qualities of reaching out and letting in--Diana’s qualities of being able to pull people toward her.”

The committee, appointed by the government last September, had agreed that an outdoor water feature near the princess’ former home of Kensington Palace, rather than a more impersonal statue, was the best way to commemorate the volatile, well-loved princess.

Opinions were divided as to whether the final structure should be a modern, groundbreaking work or have more traditional mass appeal. The Gustafson-Porter idea, which the winning team described as “a necklace across the existing contours of the site,” was deemed most appropriate.

Gustafson, once a fashion designer in Paris, has been doing landscape architecture for the last 20 years. Her American work includes a garden and bridge at Costa Mesa’s South Coast Plaza. Porter is an architect who also works on outdoor designs and is planning a Garden of Forgiveness in Beirut to commemorate the civil war there.

Naturally, the Princess Diana memorial design has its critics. While Monckton called the design “an appropriate memorial,” Vivienne Parry, longtime friend and charity worker colleague of the princess, told the BBC, “It’s very disappointing.... Here is a woman who was the most celebrated Briton of the last quarter-century, and we’ve remembered her with a puddle.”

Whatever opinions are, however, the project is expected to be finished by the end of August 2003, in time for the sixth anniversary of Diana’s death.