The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial is set amid the maples, cherries and elms of the West Potomac Park in Washington, DC. Here is a complex that might really be called an architecture of peace. Designed by Lawrence Halprin and dedicated in 1997, it has five open-air “rooms,” a prologue and one for each of FDR's administrations. The resulting space is defined in a naturalistic landscape of waterfalls, pools and groves organically unified by walls of South Dakota red granite carved by John Benson.

The plan is animated by sculptural groups and inscriptions by Leonard Baskin, Neil Estern, Robert Graham, Thomas Hardy, and George Segal, covering such topics as the social and economic consequences of the Great Depression, the WPA, the new medium of the radio, World War II and its aftermath and Roosevelt’s death. The complex is certainly “peaceful” both because of its secluded, naturalistic setting, its breezy groves and gently falling waters but also  — and more importantly — because it is surprisingly and refreshingly un —maybe even anti — triumphal, even more so given the fascistic coldness and pomposity of its near neighbor, the World War II Memorial up on the Mall.

Placed among the sculptural groups and landscapes are a series of FDR’s quotes on government and society, social justice, war and peace. The words are all at once completely familiar, full of hope and encouragement, yet still challenging.

So the monument projects that best trait of humanist architecture: it displays its content through its form. Its physical body reveals its soul, and so it is doubly an architecture of peace, both about, and embodying it, in its formal qualities and in the unity that it achieves. It is a refreshing garden of delight, of repose, tranquillity and reflection that also calls the viewer to justice and peacemaking.