The winner of a conceptual design competition for a memorial honoring the passengers and crew of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) has been announced.

The open-ideas architectural competition, launched in October 2014 by the city of Amsterdam in association with Matterbetter, aimed to find a possible way to mark the tragedy with a public installation at a 350-year-old Navy base in the Dutch capital.

The winning concept "Memorial in the Sky", designed by US-based William Smith and Hiroshi Kaneko, features a sunken dais placed just below the surface of the water, reflecting the sky above. A series of delicate columns rises from the water, with the hope that they will in time act as supports for the various plants and foliage placed throughout the space.


Memorial in the Sky
"Memorial in the Sky" by William Smith and Hiroshi Kaneko for MatterBetter.com MH17 Memorial competition. - MatterBetter.com/William Smith and Hiroshi Kaneko


In second place is "Arrivals and Departures", a landscaped park by Canadian-based trio Meaghan Hunter, Kristen Struthers and Danielle Loeb, which changes position imperceptibly throughout the year to mark the passage of time.

Third place was awarded to Fabian Tolosa, Ariel Perea and Ignacio Pereyra from the UK and Argentina, for their project "Floating Lights Memorial", featuring 298 "floating lights" in the sky, arranged around a dark mass representing the airplane's black box.

Passenger flight MH17 left Amsterdam on July 17 and was en route to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down over the Russia-Ukraine border.