LOCATION: WAUKESHA, WI
TYPE: COMPETITION
STATUS: 2021
CLIENT: PRITZKER MILITARY MUSEUM & LIBRARY
TEAM: AMANDA SCHACHTER, ALEXANDER LEVI, DUGAN LUNDAY
After rain, a broken arc emerges from the ground as a rainbow. If we were to launch ourselves into the air at that moment, we would uncover a full iridescent circle hovering over the horizon.
Gravity’s Rainbow is a great anamorphic circle inscribed in the lakeland prairie, giving visitors the power to unearth the elusive full-circle rainbow themselves. The airborne half, with facets of reflective steel, arcs 75 feet into the sky to attract passersby from miles around. The horizontal half stretches parabolically across the ground, embracing a plaza, with a conic projection of the world marking a networked timeline of key events and protagonists in stone, and a reflecting pool.
As citizen soldiers immersed in the diffuse enormity of the Cold War, visitors explore Gravity’s Rainbow on the ground. Then, all at once, from a single point, visitors behold where the whole memorial becomes the full-circle rainbow.
In his eponymous novel, Thomas Pynchon called the flight of the V2 rocket a “gravity’s rainbow.” This arc would prove to be the covenant of mutually assured destruction among postwar powers, where any transcontinental missile to reach an enemy would find an equal and opposite response, to become the circular threat to guide America’s ethos and advancement during the half-century of the Cold War.
Three decades after the Cold War, we look to soar into the sky to trace the contours of this era of economic, diplomatic, military, and intelligence development to recognize and honor its veterans.
