Flight 93 Memorial

The competition winner for the latest, and last major memorial remembering the events of September 11 was announced yesterday, almost four years since flight 93 crashed into a reclaimed strip mine in rural southwestern Pennsylvania. "Crescent of Embrace" by Paul Murdoch Architects with Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects is the winner of the Flight 93 National Memorial, which received more than 1,000 entries in the first round and was narrowed to five finalists for the last round of judging.

The winning design consists of five major components:


1:: Gateway (Tower of Voices)


2:: Approach/Return


3:: Bowl (Crescent of Embrace)


4:: Sacred Ground

5:: Perimeter/Viewshed, where "existing tree coverage along the Park perimeter is preserved to maintain views to and from the Memorial Expressions and to help decrease disturbance from outside the Park."

Given the rural site and its size, its natural for the landscape to be used for meaning more than architecture. Interventions in the winning design, as well as the other finalists, are minimal, in favor of approaches that create spaces, paths, etc. via landscape elements. Regardless, we still see the impact of Maya Lin's Vietnam Memorial, but in this case that's not bad, as the landscape will slowly evolve into something richer than any of the minimalist designs portend. In the case of the winner, the strongest "element" appears to be its namesake, the Crescent of Embrace, though hopefully the idea will not be lost due to the huge size of the space, a similar danger for the WTC Memorial.

Good Grief Update: "Flight 93 memorial decried as Islam symbol" (link via Archinect)