In collaboration with artist Sharon Hayes, artist team of Lopez/Hayes won the public art commission in 2021 to build a public project on the Delaware River waterfront on the the site of the newly developed Penn's Landing Park.

Here is the original winning proposal: "The Forum is a sculpture, a gathering site, a public amenity, a reparation to the landscape and a recognition of the waterfront as a complex site holding meaningful histories. Our work looks beyond the dominant stories of Philadelphia to give a platform to the less-known narratives that are a vital part of our present and future as a city.

The sculpture has two components. A 500ft. long, low wall carved into the landscape that arcs alongside the edge of a designed sidewalk in shape of the 18th century shoreline of the Lenapewihittuck, the name the Lenape gave to the Delaware River. The gesture speaks to the Lenape’s custom of clearing land near riverbeds for settlement and ceremonial assembly. The jagged and rippling boundary orients park visitors to the original geography of the land, and excavates submerged histories along the waterfront.

Sitting inside this gathering site is a constellation of 5 concrete slabs that emerge from the meadow as reimagined ruined fragments from the foundation of Pennsylvania Hall, an 1838 anti-slavery venue near the waterfront that was burned down by a white mob 4 days after its opening. Taking up the Hall’s commitments: freedom, hope, change, righteous collective struggle and justice, the platforms are an invitation for contemporary publics to listen, sing, reflect, dance, testify, witness and be free. They are for park goers, families, friends to sit and hang out and also for organized events like theater, dance, poetry or music. The differently-sized platforms allow for small informal performance and large ticketed events.

Our work invites people to make it their own; it will transform as the city’s transforms; it reaches out to our future selves with a grounded accountability to our rich and diverse pasts. The Forum provides a new foundation that reaches across platforms to see each other anew."

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Read more about the Penn's Landing Park Artwork Commission here

The public project is scheduled to be unveiled in 2025.