I spent a couple of hours this morning thinking about the Pentagon Memorial, and I made a design in response to those selected by the jury for the Army Corps or Engineers Competition. Click here to see it.
To be honest, my original idea embodied the somewhat escapist idea that we could go back to the time before the attacks, that we could undo what had happened. I wondered, "What if, somehow, Flight 77 veered at the last minute and resumed its original course, heading uneventfully toward Los Angeles?" I found that, instead of escapism, my response had to painfully acknowledge that, while briefly entertaining such thoughts is a natural human response, we must inevitably confront what happened and deal with the losses and changes in our world.
To some degree, my design is also a response to Benjamin Forgey's wistful comment in the Post: "Still, I'd like to recognize the Pentagon memorial at a distance, to reflect on it as an identifiable part of Washintgon's symbolic landscape." It's a comment I can understand well.
The memorial in Thiepval was designed to dominate the surrounding landscape, built as it is on a promontory with key strategic value to both sides in the Battle of the Somme. Also, Forgey understands Washington well; this place is nothing if not a symbolic landscape, and for every tourist who pulls up to a memorial, thousands of people drive right on by. A memorial that doesn't take them--or the millions of others who experienced the attacks on television--into account drastically limits its own impact.
Click here to read a compilation of my weblog entries about of memorials.
