Woolpert wins NC ACEC design award for veterans memorial

Kernersville, N.C. — Woolpert’s design of the Carolina Field of Honor, a veterans’ memorial dedicated on Memorial Day 2014, earned a Special Projects (Recreational Facilities) Engineering Excellence Award from the North Carolina chapter of the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC).

Woolpert is a national architecture, engineering and geospatial firm. ACEC's annual Engineering Excellence Awards (EEA) competition honors the year's most outstanding engineering accomplishments. Projects that win at the state-level EEA competitions are eligible for ACEC's national competition.

The Carolina Field of Honor, which includes a 60-foot granite obelisk and five granite monuments representing each of the U.S. Armed Forces, is a tribute to the servicemen and servicewomen who selflessly gave their lives to protect our nation’s freedom. The memorial is the centerpiece of Triad Park in Kernersville, N.C.

The $5 million project was financed through a fundraising campaign, to which Woolpert contributed. Woolpert has provided design services at Triad Park for more than 20 years.

Additional monument components include a fountain and reflecting pool, a flag walk, a memorial wall naming veterans and sponsors, and a portion of a steel beam from the World Trade Center. The finest materials were used in the memorial’s construction, including granite sourced from the same Mount Airy, N.C., site that supplied granite for the National World War II Memorial in Washington.

Designers at Woolpert are working on the next phase of the project, which includes construction of an additional shelter, restroom facilities and an amphitheater structure.