Architect Team: Finalists for Memorial

Photo of Memory Trail Visitor Center
(Courtesy of AP)
The visitor center as depicted in the “Memory Trail” proposal for the Flight 93 memorial.

The memorial competition attempts to honor the choice of the passengers and crew and provide a place for not only reflection, but remembrance. To date there have been three international competitions for memorials for the victims of the attacks of Sept. 11. The first two are at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center sites. This is the third and final competition.

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Feb. 22, 2005) -- Karen Lewis, an architecture faculty member in the University of Kentucky College of Design, and a team of three others, has been named one of the five finalists for the Flight 93 Memorial located in Somerset County, Pa. The Partners of Flight 93, the Families of Flight 93, Flight 93 Advisory Commission, Flight 93 Task Force, and the National Park Service invited designers throughout North America to submit designs for the process receiving 1,011 submittals. The Stage I jury report stated that the five finalists that enter Stage II of the process all “provide a ‘memorial express’ while considering and respecting the land.”

The memorial will pay tribute to the 40 passengers and crew members killed when United Airlines Flight 93 was hijacked by terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001. It is believed that the terrorists who took over the plane were targeting Washington, D.C., but their plans were thwarted by an uprising among passengers and crew. The plane crashed outside of Shanksville, Pa., at approximately 10:06 a.m.

Lewis and the other team members – Frederick Steiner, dean of architecture at the University of Texas at Austin; Jason Kentner and E. Lynn Miller, landscape architecture faculty at the University of Texas at Austin – submitted a design titled “Memory Trail” to memorialize the events that unfolded on Flight 93.

“Flight 93 is very different from the other attacks on 9/11 because it wasn't an attack: it was a decision by 40 men and women to stop the plane,“ Lewis said. “Because no building was destroyed, and only two people witnessed the event, it’s difficult to design something that memorializes what happened in Pennsylvania.”

“Memory Trail” uses architecture and landscape architecture to make a path honoring the journey of the 40 passengers and crew who died. It includes a visitor center that offers the public a place to pay their respects. The building’s architecture “rises up from the hillside, placing visitors somewhere between the sky and the earth,” says Lewis. Another area of the design includes a bowl where 3,021 white oaks would be planted representing all the victims of the four Sept. 11 attacks. The “Allee of Honor” utilizes a path of 40 Red Maple trees which family members pass through to access the Sacred Ground. The “Sacred Ground,” open only to family members of the victims, is the site where Flight 93 crashed.

The five finalists from Stage I will each be awarded $25,000 to begin work on Stage II of the competition. Initially they will create master plans for the memorial site and eventually present a three dimensional model for the jury to evaluate. The author of the winning concept will be announced in September 2005 and be invited to negotiate a contract with the National Park Service for design of the memorial. For more information on the project is available online.

Karen Lewis teaches architecture studio and leads a graduate research project on visual identity at UK’s School of Architecture. She received a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in architecture from Wellesley College and a master’s in architecture from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. Professionally, Lewis worked as a museum exhibition designer in New York City, developing and designing exhibits for museums such as the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, the Connecticut Historical Society, and the Curtiss Museum of Aviation, and she was a principal information designer for the Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield Web site while working for Icon-Nicholson, an Internet and media design firm.