Guthrie Memorial Revitalization

Reconsidering how a community remembers

Riverside, Illinois

A veterans memorial carries both civic and emotional significance. Any alteration must respect the people it honors while also considering how visitors encounter, understand, and use the site.

For Riverside’s Guthrie Memorial, Rock directed a study examining how the memorial might be revitalized while remaining appropriately scaled to its prominent setting within the Village. Memorial landscapes often call for restraint: scale, movement, material, and sightlines should support reflection without competing with the meaning of the place itself.

Conceptual design followed a detailed site-analysis process. Alternatives explored the memorial’s scale, visitor access, circulation, and potential locations, allowing the Village to compare different approaches rather than committing prematurely to a single design.

The work was completed by Rock while at Living Habitats and was intended not only to test design possibilities, but also to give the Village a clearer basis for discussion and decision-making.

Rather than presenting one predetermined answer, the study was structured to help the Village build consensus and pursue future funding.

The conceptual alternatives created a flexible framework that could evolve as community support, available resources, and priorities developed—giving local leadership a practical foundation for future decisions while preserving the memorial’s dignity and civic significance.

A landscape reconnected

The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing is designed not simply as a bridge, but as an extension of the Santa Monica Mountains themselves. Native soils, carefully selected plant communities, natural screening, and varied terrain work together to create habitat that feels continuous rather than constructed.

Every element supports movement across the freeway while reducing the sights, sounds, and disturbance of traffic below. The result is living infrastructure shaped by ecology—creating a safer passage for wildlife and restoring a connection that the landscape has been missing for generations.

More than a crossing

The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing represents what becomes possible when science, design, engineering, advocacy, and public support move toward a shared goal. It restores a vital connection across one of Southern California’s most significant barriers while creating a model for how infrastructure can respond more thoughtfully to the natural systems around it.

For Rock Design Associates, the project reflects a long-term commitment to collaboration, ecological understanding, and design that serves both people and place. More than a passage over a freeway, the crossing is a lasting investment in the resilience of the Santa Monica Mountains and the wildlife communities that depend on them.