This website uses cookies as well as similar tools and technologies to understand visitors' experiences. By continuing to use this website, you consent to Columbia University's usage of cookies and similar technologies, in accordance with the Columbia University Website Cookie Notice
Martin Heidegger said: language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home. The tribes of Lenape have not only lost their lands and people but also their beautiful and articulate ways of describing places. They have been forgotten, or sometimes even twisted and manufactured by the public media. The project tries to unearth these place names and their original identities hidden beneath the modern strata and lay a bridge – an architectural intervention – to celebrate and preserve them. It connects eight different sites in and around Shorakapkok – the present-day Inwood Hill Park – through a trail and sets up a memorial of each own type inspired by original toponyms and meanings of these places. These new memorials carefully integrate architecture and landscape and can house multiple different programs thus opening up diverse possibilities to interpret these place names. Through these different activities, by just being in these places, the storytelling continues to the future. And the forgotten language lives and perseveres.