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The winning design for a proposed AIDS Memorial in the West Village on the former site of St. Vincent’s Hospital campus features a grove of white birch trees surrounded by a triangle of tall mirrored walls.

The design – known as “Infinite Forest” from Brooklyn design firm Studio a+i – was selected by the AIDS Memorial Park Coalition from 475 participants in a competition chaired by Michael Arad, who designed the World Trade Center Memorial. The proposed memorial is designed to occupy the small triangular park framed by Greenwich Avenue, 7th Avenue and West 12th Street.

“We wanted something that would serve as much as a neighborhood park as much as a memorial,” Arad said. “This cannot be the sort of project that serves a narrow constituency.”

A rendering of the triangular memorial shows a grove of birch trees fenced in by a trio of 10-foot tall mirrored walls. Each wall has a slate façade that faces the street and an inner wall of mirrored glass that reflect off one another.  Gaps between the walls form portals for people to enter and exit the park.  

“The idea is that the mirrored forest would create a boundless space that reflects not just the countless victims and future victims of the AIDS epidemic, and the global reach of the epidemic,” said design team member John Thurtle. “It also allows people to bring their own personal relationship to AIDS and really have an emotional engagement on a personal level.”

But a spokesman for Rudin Management — which owns and is developing the park as part of a luxury condominium complex — said implementing the coalition’s proposal would mean retracing much of the zoning process that has already occurred.

Marilyn Dorato, head of the Greenwich Village Block Association, calls the new proposal “design gone crazy.” She favors the Rudin plan.

“We have two schools nearby, and a lot of young families," she said. "We’re really looking for a small park that’s really, really friendly for children, and this just isn’t it. This seems designed to attract attention, which means more people coming into the neighborhood. We don’t need another tourist attraction.”

Last week, the city Planning Commission approved Rudin’s application, which now goes to the City Council for a final say. Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden asked Rudin to work with community members to develop a memorial.

Christopher Tepper, co-founder of the AIDS Memorial Park Coalition, says the design selected on Monday is “just a starting point. Up ahead, he said, is “going back sitting with the community board, working with the designers to revise their concept, working with the Rudins, [who] have an existing plan, and seeing how the two can be integrated together, and looking for formal blessing for the site from the City Council.”

No price tag is attached to the competition-winning design. Tepper said his organization would privately raise money -- above the $10 million committed by Rudin in its zoning application -- to build the project, after the design is finalized.
 
Organizers hope it will be complete by the end of 2014.