Often, AIDS stigma is expressed in conjunction with one or more other stigmas, particularly those associated with homosexuality, bisexuality, promiscuity, prostitution, and intravenous drug use.

The proposed New York City AIDS Memorial Park designed by Tal Senior Architects (TSA), is for the site located at the gateway to New York City’s storied West Village neighborhood and blocks from the Chelsea neighborhood, on a triangle of land bounded by Seventh Ave, West 12th Street and Greenwich Avenue.

The cultural significance of this site cannot be overstated; it stands at the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic in New York City through its adjacency to the former St. Vincent’s Hospital.
St. Vincent’s is the single site most associated with the AIDS crisis in New York City.

The TSA proposed project deals with, in a metaphoric sense, the condition by which people with AIDS were shun from the public.
The shunning included disassociating by other members of the community.
The memorial takes form as a descent into a lowered separated twisted deformed spiraling space, a twisted reality and perception in which a number of trees in the park occupy a submerged zone separated and isolated from the rest of the park.

The turned over descending spiral space analogous to the non return vector of the AIDS disease, ending with death, starts with a modest intervening opening in the surface of the park and grows up in size as one descends into the world of AIDS.

The project was designed with the hope of creating a memorial park that provides a much-needed inspirational, educational and green public oasis for the city and surrounding community.