The Koknese Foundation is planning to create a memorial site dedicated to the victims of the totalitarian regime during the 20th century, and the site of the memorial shall be located amidst the Daugava River, near the Koknese Castle ruins and the Lutheran Church.

According to plans, this will become a national-relevance monument commemorating the loss of the Latvian nation, the suffering and injustice done to the people.

This memorial site must symbolically be the meeting place for all the lost souls of Latvian from around the world, and show the cost of freedom and independence of the nation was. At the same time the memorial site must embody the Latvian nation’s endurance and strength to stand and have an optimistic future outlook. The site should not evoke dark or depressing thoughts in its visitors, it should rather bring enlightenment and consolation. Daugava River plays a special role because of its historical significance in the fate of the Latvian nation and the home of Krievkalns Islet.

In the open international project idea tender for the artistic and conceptual image of the memorial, announced by Koknese Foundation, the first prize was granted to the project "The Meadow", designed by monk and famous landscape architect Shunmyo Masuno from Japan.

The first prize was given to the project by Masuno for the successful complex solution that knits together the historical, spatial and philosophical concept of the place. The vertical of the Koknese church, Koknese castle ruins and the islet forms the spatial triangle traversed by the river Daugava. The project conceived by the Japanese architect complies with the task of the jury – to create the memorial garden, which step by step leads visitors through the wide-ranged scale of emotional experience from meditation to culmination reaching the central place in the garden with open view of the river.

Second prize went to Andris Blūms from Jūrmala for the project "AA 34564", which clearly and artistically embodies the idea about the tragedy of Latvians in 20^th century. Third prize was won by Claudio Zappia from the United Kingdom. His project "The Island of Memories" was highly evaluated by the jury for the offered objects of garden architecture – stones and local flowers. This idea could serve for the development of the Memorial Site in Koknese.

The encouragement prize was given to the project "The Garden of Souls", designed by Lauma Garkalne, Ligita Tomiņa, Loreta Erele and Gunta Rozenberga from Riga. The jury congratulated the architects for the successful solution of the garden centre, which is to be the gathering place in the memorial, where everybody could bring a stone – the symbol of the soul, and the idea to create the apple garden and the lines of briar-roses in the garden.