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“Engaging Hallowed Ground” is Amanda Ton’s 2019 landscape-architecture proposal for making arrival at Arlington National Cemetery clearer, more dignified and easier to operate. Its key idea is to use changes in elevation to separate funeral arrivals from tourist and everyday visitor circulation without pretending the two communities are unrelated. A sunken Memorial Avenue would lead funeral parties toward the cemetery, while visitors would enter through plazas and an underground welcome center containing screening, exhibitions and administrative functions. The scheme also proposes a traffic circle, amphitheater, parking garage, tram station, planting screens and a waterfall. It is an award-winning student proposal—not a documented construction project or adopted plan—so its value lies in the spatial strategy, principles and questions it raises for designing sensitive civic landscapes.
What is “Engaging Hallowed Ground”?
“Engaging Hallowed Ground: Re-envisioning the Arrival Ground of Arlington National Cemetery” is a student landscape-architecture proposal by Amanda Ton, then affiliated with Harvard University Graduate School of Design. The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) recognized it with a 2019 Student Honor Award in General Design. Harvard GSD’s account of the award winners likewise identifies Ton’s project and describes how changes in elevation shape experiences for tourists, mourners and other guests.
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The ASLA project narrative says Arlington National Cemetery was founded in 1864, occupies more than 624 acres and is the final resting place of more than 400,000 people. It also gives a historical context of roughly 25 burials per day and more than three million tourists a year. Those figures belong to the narrative published with the 2019 award record; the available sources do not establish their reference year or confirm that they remain current.
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Most importantly, the sources describe a design proposal. They do not establish that Ton’s arrival sequence was built, funded, adopted or substituted for existing facilities.
Why did the proposal focus on arrival?
Arrival is the moment when several incompatible rhythms meet. A funeral party needs privacy, composure and an uninterrupted route. Tour groups need orientation, ticketing or screening, places to gather and a clear way toward destinations. Employees, service vehicles, buses and security operations need capacity and predictable movement. If all of those activities share one undifferentiated forecourt, mourners can feel exposed while visitors struggle to understand where to go.
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That ambition explains the project’s title. “Engaging” refers to active orientation and visual connection; “Hallowed Ground” acknowledges that the ground itself carries historic and emotional meaning. The proposal attempts to make operational necessities—screening, administration, parking and transit—support rather than overwhelm that meaning.
How does the circulation strategy work?
The central move is vertical separation. A sunken Memorial Avenue would provide a distinct approach for funeral attendees. By lowering that route, the scheme gives funeral traffic a directional spine that is visually and physically differentiated from the visitor arrival sequence above it. The separation is not described as a sealed tunnel: the changing ground levels are intended to preserve awareness that different users are sharing one institution.
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Tourists and other visitors would approach through a series of plazas leading to an underground welcome center. Locating the welcome functions below grade concentrates security screening, educational exhibition and administrative work in one legible threshold. Visitors could be processed and oriented before dispersing toward cemetery destinations, while the surface remains available for ceremonial and landscape experiences.
A waterfall is proposed as both screen and signal. Its sound and visual movement would help buffer funeral arrivals from visitor activity, yet it would also make the coexistence of those journeys perceptible. The project therefore uses sensory separation—topography, water, planting and sightlines—alongside ordinary traffic engineering.
A traffic circle would distribute vehicles before they reach the separate arrival areas. In principle, a roundabout can reduce conflicting turning movements and give drivers a clear decision point; the proposal’s drawings and narrative should be read as a conceptual organization, not as a traffic study or a guarantee of operational performance.
What spaces would visitors and staff encounter?
The proposal groups several components into a coordinated arrival ground:
- Sunken Memorial Avenue: a dedicated route for funeral attendees, lowered to distinguish ceremonial movement from general visitors.
- Welcoming plaza: an above-ground civic threshold where visitors can gather and understand the next step of their journey.
- Underground welcome center: a combined facility for security screening, educational exhibition and administrative functions.
- Amphitheater: a public gathering space associated with the welcoming plaza and the interpretive role of the entrance.
- Funeral-attendee and administrative area: a quieter zone screened by planting, intended to support mourners and day-to-day operations.
- Three-story parking garage: proposed accommodation for visitors, tour buses and employees, consolidating vehicles rather than allowing them to dominate the arrival forecourt.
- Tour tram station: a dedicated transfer point for visitors continuing into the cemetery by tram.
- Water feature and grade changes: landscape devices that separate, frame and connect the different arrival experiences.
These are proposed design elements, not a list of confirmed Arlington facilities. Their importance is relational: the garage, tram station and screening center only make sense as parts of a sequence that moves from traffic distribution to orientation, then toward memorial space.
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How do the five design principles guide the plan?
Ton’s narrative names five principles. Together they provide a useful checklist for judging whether an arrival intervention serves both practical and memorial goals.
- Legibility & Dispersion. Routes and destinations should be understandable at a glance, while people and vehicles are distributed rather than forced into one congested node. The traffic circle, differentiated approaches and organized plaza system express this principle.
- Transition & Anticipation. The design should mark the psychological change from everyday travel to sacred ground. A descending route, controlled views, water and the progression through a welcome center create anticipation instead of an abrupt curb-to-cemetery transition.
- Separation & Experience. Funeral parties, tourists, staff and vehicles require different degrees of privacy and orientation. Separation is achieved through elevation, planting and program, but the proposal retains awareness that these experiences coexist.
- Function & Capacity. Security, administration, parking, buses and tram operations must fit within a working institution. The underground support spaces and three-story garage are attempts to absorb that capacity without allowing infrastructure to erase the landscape.
- Integrity & Respect. New construction and circulation must honor the cemetery’s historic axis and memorial purpose. The principle sets a limit on visual spectacle: every dramatic move, including the waterfall or amphitheater, has to reinforce dignity rather than compete with it.
These principles also reveal the project’s trade-offs. A route that is very private may become hard to find; a highly visible welcome center may improve orientation but intrude on the historic setting; and concentrating services underground can preserve the surface while increasing excavation, waterproofing and life-safety demands. The proposal presents a framework for resolving those tensions, not final engineering answers.
Why does the planting palette matter?
The planting list draws from the cemetery’s existing Memorial Arboretum palette. Named species include ginkgo, Japanese zelkova, Kousa dogwood, pin oak, red maple, river birch, Shumard oak, southern magnolia, sugar maple and white oak. Selecting from an established palette can help a new arrival landscape feel continuous with the cemetery rather than like an unrelated ornamental garden.
In the proposal, planting is functional as well as decorative. Rows or masses of trees screen the funeral-attendee and administrative area, shape views between levels and help visitors read where one zone ends and another begins. Canopy, seasonal change and tree scale can also soften the presence of a parking garage and make a large civic threshold feel more like a landscape than a transportation interchange.
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A real project would still need site-specific soil, drainage, root-zone, utility, maintenance and preservation studies. The award record identifies the palette but does not provide a construction schedule, quantities, irrigation design or guarantee that every listed species would be installed.
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What did the 2019 ASLA award recognize?
The award recognized the proposal’s ability to turn a complex circulation problem into a visual and spatial narrative. The 2019 ASLA Awards Jury wrote:
“This proposal both refines and redefines the currently fragmented and uninspiring arrival experience at Arlington National Cemetery, one of the most sensitive landscapes in the country, and is an example of the power of visual storytelling through landscape architecture.”
That statement is an assessment of the student work, not a finding that the cemetery’s current arrival is objectively fragmented or that the proposed solution has been built. It does, however, explain why the project matters to construction and landscape professionals: grading, circulation, water, planting and program are treated as one story rather than as isolated packages.
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Is the project built or officially adopted?
No. The available ASLA and Harvard GSD sources present “Engaging Hallowed Ground” as a 2019 student proposal and award recipient. They do not document construction, procurement, an implementation date, a completed welcome center, a new Memorial Avenue or an official adoption by Arlington National Cemetery.
Readers should therefore use conditional language: “the proposal would,” “Ton’s scheme places” or “the design envisions.” Calling the garage, tram station or underground center existing facilities would overstate what the sources support. The distinction is especially important for a nationally significant cemetery, where security, historic preservation, accessibility, military protocol and public funding would all require approvals beyond a student award.
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What can construction and landscape professionals learn from the proposal?
The project offers a method for organizing difficult sites before selecting materials or detailing structures.
- Map users before drawing buildings. Identify funeral processions, visitors, buses, staff, service vehicles and security as separate movement patterns. Their conflicts often reveal that the first design decision should be circulation, not architecture.
- Use section, not only plan. Ton’s most consequential move is a change in elevation. A section can show privacy, visibility, drainage, retaining conditions and the emotional sequence of a route more clearly than a flat diagram.
- Make back-of-house work part of the public experience. Administration and screening are unavoidable. Placing them in a coherent threshold can reduce clutter and give visitors a clear explanation of what happens next.
- Design separation without erasing connection. Screens, planting and level changes can protect mourners while maintaining institutional awareness. Total isolation may create confusing wayfinding; total exposure may undermine dignity.
- Treat capacity as a landscape question. Parking, buses and tram transfers determine how much surface must be paved. Consolidating vehicles vertically or below grade can preserve open ground, but it shifts complexity into structure, ventilation, fire protection and maintenance.
- Test the historic relationship early. Any intervention near a ceremonial axis should be assessed for sightlines, scale, material character and long-term tree growth before detailed construction documents are prepared.
How should the proposal be evaluated today?
A fair evaluation separates design intent from verified performance. The sources support asking whether the scheme clearly differentiates funeral and visitor routes, creates a meaningful transition, accommodates security and administration, and respects the historic axis. They do not support claims about reduced travel times, improved crowd safety, construction cost, accessibility compliance or visitor satisfaction.
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What is the central takeaway?
“Engaging Hallowed Ground” argues that arrival is not a neutral prelude to a memorial site. By separating routes vertically, concentrating visitor services underground and using planting, water and plazas to choreograph awareness, Amanda Ton’s proposal seeks dignity for mourners and clarity for visitors at the same time. Its 2019 ASLA recognition confirms the strength of that design argument; it does not turn the proposal into a built project. The lasting lesson is to make circulation, capacity and respect for place one design problem—and to state plainly which parts are proven conditions and which remain architectural propositions.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who designed Engaging Hallowed Ground, and who advised the project?
Amanda Ton authored the proposal while affiliated with Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Martin Poirier is listed as the faculty advisor in the project record.
Which ASLA award did the Arlington arrival proposal receive?
The project received a 2019 ASLA Student Honor Award in the General Design category. The award recognizes the student proposal as presented in the ASLA record, not a completed construction project.
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Are the cemetery’s acreage, burial and visitor figures current?
The figures commonly repeated with this project—more than 624 acres, over 400,000 interments, about 25 burials per day and more than three million tourists annually—come from the project narrative published in the 2019 award record. The supplied sources do not verify their reference year or establish that they remain current.
Does the project specify products, contractors or construction costs?
No. The available records describe spatial organization, grading, program and a planting palette, but they do not name contractors, product models, suppliers, quantities or prices. Any construction estimate would require a separate site and engineering study.
