Learning From Past Arguments: Designing Memorials

By looking back at past processes on the designing and building of the Vietnam Veteran and World Trade Center memorials, the United States is able to learn some of the possibilities and mishaps of public debate. These lessons that are able to be learned will be able to be applied to future debates of public importance, creating a more comfortable and prepared debate. Many things went right but there were also many things that went wrong with the public debates that surrounded the design and construction of the Vietnam Veteran and World Trade Center memorials. The things that went wrong and delayed the construction of both memorials were things that should’ve previously been thought out. This is a great example of how the current memorial designing system is at a fault.

For the public to truly understand how to represent victims in a memorial, the public needs to know all of the aspects that go into creating a memorial. If the public doesn’t actually understand the intense process that goes into creating a memorial then they won’t understand why a memorial designer created the memorial that they did. Maya Lin didn’t design what other people wanted her to. She designed what she had in her mind. Designing a memorial to fit everyone’s idea is not an easy task, let alone just designing a memorial. The artist has to think about the surroundings of the memorials, the colors, the shape, the mood, and other aspects. By studying the past debates of the

creation of memorials the United States can learn how to deal with these problems in a more civilized way than in the past. The United States will be able to learn such things as what truly goes into creating a memorial, what memorials really stand for, and what the general people want out of the memorial whether it’s to express their grief, to remember the ones who they lost, or just to remember the event that had occurred. Any of these things can be learned by studying the debates over the Vietnam Veterans memorial and the World Trade Center memorial.

One of the mishaps that were found was in the actual process of designing and building of the Vietnam Veterans memorial. When a memorial is going to be made, a competition is held where people all over submit their artwork of how they interpret the memorial to look like. Once all of the entries have been submitted and collected, then they are to be looked over by a panel of judges which are in turn handed over to governmental agencies. The numbers of entries are then slimmed down until the best piece of artwork is selected. The problem with this system is that the judges and government are deciding too much about what the memorial will look like, and not the