Diana Memorial Design Finally Picked

By Stephen M. Silverman

07/31/2002 at 12:00 PM EDT

Out of 58 entrants, an American design firm has submitted the winning plan in the 3-year-old competition to build a fitting memorial to Princess Diana in London, reports Reuters. The long delay for the announcement of a design plan -- nearly five years after the death of Diana in a Paris car crash -- was blamed on bureaucratic wrangling and squabbling between modernists and traditionalists, says the news service. Within the past month, Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell said, "It is deeply disappointing that, five years on, nothing has happened." On Wednesday, the team led by U.S. landscape artist Kathryn Gustafson was chosen to design a memorial, which will take the form of a $5 million fountain next to the Serpentine lake in London's Hyde Park. In announcing the result, Jowell said the decision required "the judgment of Solomon. Now that we have a winner, we can move on to build a worthy memorial to Diana's life." Gustafson's team now has just one year to submit a finished design and have it approved by the government. The aim is to unveil the structure by August 2003.