Diana memorial to be restrained water feature

The fraught search for a memorial to Diana, Princess of Wales, was finally completed yesterday, four years and 11 months after she died in a car crash in Paris.

Tessa Jowell, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, announced that a restrained, moat-like water feature would be built in Hyde Park, near Princess Diana's home at Kensington Palace.

The £3m tribute was chosen by Ms Jowell after an independent committee chaired by Rosa Monckton, a friend of the late princess, became deadlocked between two designs.

Ms Jowell studied criteria such as architectural quality and relevance to the subject before settling on the proposal from the London-based architect Neil Porter and his American colleague Kathryn Gustafson over a more radical plan for a dome of water from the British sculptor Anish Kapoor.

The moat, or oval stone ring, will be created on a gentle slope. Water will flow down in two lanes, a fast lane and a slow lane that will be shallow enough for children to paddle in, converging in a hollow.

Mr Porter said he and Ms Gustafson had been trying to achieve a lasting memorial "which would welcome people into its heart, much as she did. There is a restrained elegance about it that tries to pick up on some of the qualities that Diana had. It would have different meanings for different people and on different days," he said. "On sunny days, children will paddle and play and chase and race sticks in the shallow water, On a wet day, it will become more contemplative, a space to ride the waves of a diverse world."

The subtlety of the final choice – out of 58 designs considered by the committee – is unlikely to satisfy everyone. Of 2,500 viewers who voted in a poll for Channel 5's The Wright Stuff, only 1 per cent backed the winning scheme. The Kapoor scheme received 2 per cent of the vote.

Vivienne Parry, who worked with the princess, was scathing. "I think it's nothing. It's not a monument as we know it. Here was the most celebrated Briton of the last quarter century and this monument is something you'd trip over before you'd realise it's even there. It's the sort of thing you would see in a garden at the Chelsea Flower Show. It's not a national monument, it's a national nothing."