Normandy Visitor Center, Omaha Beach
Client: American Battle Monuments Commission
Project: Normandy American Cemetery Visitor Centre
Collaborators: ABMC teams and Haley Sharpe Design
In time for the 75th anniversary of the D Day landings in 2019, ABMC wanted to redevelop their visitor centre to commemorate and retell the incredible story of more than 9,300 Amercian soldiers, buried and commemorated in the cemetery grounds.
For the anniversary ceremony, around 750 D Day veterans and their families were brought over to visit from the USA.
The Visitor Center is located overlooking Omaha Beach. The galleries reveal the events of the D Day Landings and the ensuing Normandy Campaign.
Our approach wherever possible was to use the real words and contemporary accounts of Americans, Allies and civilians, who fought, died and lived through this momentous time in world history.
Powerful images taken at the time by Robert Capa, are shown in the exhibition at lifesize scale, drawing visitors into the perspective of someone who was there at the time.
The final experience, the memorial room, transitions visitor physically and emotionally into the beautiful grounds of the cemetery where they can move among the graves and look out the beach where it all happened.
Video courtesy of Alex Faulkner (2020 Media)
The exterior of the Visitor Center (image courtesy of ABMC)
Looking out over the cemetery.
The cemetery one year after D-Day
Human scale images place you in the position of the soldiers (image courtasy of hsd)
Installations and graphics place objects in context (image courtasy of hsd)
Displays and content move visitors through the events of D-Day and the Normanty Campaign (image courtasy of hsd)
Image courtesy of hsd
Image courtesy of hsd
Image courtesy of hsd
Image courtesy of hsd