Central College is located in Pella, Iowa, a city best known for its annual Tulip Festival. As its name implies, the campus is positioned directly in the middle of this community, and at the heart of the campus sits the Peace Mall, an outdoor space with meaningful connections to the campus.
Central College's history is filled with examples of students and staff dedicating themselves to U.S. military service, so the institution engaged landscape architecture firm RDG Planning & Design to create a space where people could go to celebrate the college's veterans and the many significant moments and meaningful themes in Central's history. RDG's design for the Central College Peace Mall, which was completed in October 2019, incorporates a garden, amphitheater, and site monuments to establish an area on campus where visitors can hear the voices of the past and honor the legacy established by military service.

 
The challenge in creating the memorial space was one of tone: with a campus as jovial and vibrant as Central College, RDG's design team needed to establish a tenor for the memorial that would honor the memory of prior generations and also embrace the lifestyles of contemporary college life. To meet this challenge, RDG designed the space to be flexible in its use, allowing the college to host outdoor classes, weddings, and other gatherings in the amphitheater while maintaining a peaceful garden atmosphere within the veteran's memorial. The botanically diverse, tranquil garden highlights Central College's unique history and is intended to be a place of reflection with various areas where visitors can have a moment of solitude and reflection. Well-positioned within the Peace Mall, the amphitheater design utilizes accessible paths and seating improvements to create an inviting space to host social functions and outdoor classes, or welcome passersby who hope to learn more about this campus' unique history.
RDG's design incorporates sustainable features throughout, including permeable pavers, decomposed granite surfacing, and a diverse plant palette. These features were used to improve sustainability and stormwater management on a site that was previously limited to turf grass and concrete. The use of traditional earth tone and permeable clay pavers, weathering steel, coated metal, wood plank seating, locally sourced limestone seating, and wall stone, cast stone, decomposed granite, and frosted glass, also allowed the design team to embrace classic materials found on campus while maintaining a clean aesthetic.
One key design element of the space is the 10-foot-high art installation "Sentinels," which flanks the entrance to the Peace Mall and displays more than 1,200 names etched in the glass. Designed by the Art Studio at RDG, the memorial's placement in the Peace Mall is both conspicuous and momentous and the structure is fabricated out of durable and resilient materials such as glass, stone, and metal. The weathering steel sentinels immortalized in the monuments encircle the main site walkway and hold an eternal salute, representing the campus' acknowledgment of all who came before.
Strategic and comprehensive lighting is incorporated throughout the landscape, enabling the garden and amphitheater to feel just as safe during the evening as it does during the day. The illuminated monuments, strategically placed multi-fixture area lighting, and plant bed up-lighting, create a distinct sense of place. Internal monument lighting intentionally establishes a threshold on the pavement between the monuments to emphasize the importance of these features and invite
visitor interaction.
Central College's Peace Mall now serves as a space that honors the past while remaining flexible for the future. It is a space that can be used for events where people can gather and socialize and also provides a peaceful retreat for students, faculty, and visitors alike. The mall is an asset to the campus community and will continue to be for years
to come.