Landscape Architect Articles

Dispute Over Flight 93 Memorial11-07-05 | News

Dispute Over Flight 93 Memorial

Paul Murdoch Architects and Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects collaborated on the Flight 93 National Memorial design in Pennsylvania. Critics say this red crescent of maple trees recalls an Islamic symbol.

The design for a memorial for victims of the Flight 93 hijacking on Sept. 11, 2001 has been attacked by critics who say it is built around an Islamic symbol.

Los Angeles architect Paul Murdoch barely had time to enjoy his victory over four other finalists before his design was savaged by angry bloggers and a congressman, Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., who charged that its crescent of red maple trees is a sign of sympathy for the Muslim fundamentalists who carried out the hijacking.

The crescent is a symbol of Islam on the Algerian, Tunisian and Turkish flags. It?EUR??,,????'???s a symbol that Murdoch now admits he might have considered a bit earlier in the design process.

The crescent moon is a reference to the start of the month of Ramadan. The Red Crescent emergency service charity is the equivalent of the Red Cross in the U.S.

“It didn’t seem, to us, loaded at all,” a drained-looking Murdoch told the L.A. Times in October. He was sitting behind the broad desk in the Los Angeles office where he runs a small firm with his wife, Milena. “We wanted to use the crescent of trees to embrace the final resting place of the victims – that was the symbolism. And we continue to feel that most people understand that.”

The design for the Flight 93 memorial was greeting with support from the Families of Flight 93 and the various partner organizations when it was announced in September.

In Sept. 2004 a two-stage International Design Competition was launched, providing professionals in the design disciplines as well as the general public an opportunity to present design ideas for the memorial expression. The competition received more than 1,000 entries of design concepts, including narrative and graphic descriptions for the Flight 93 National Memorial.

The selected Memorial was designed by Paul Murdoch Architects of Los Angeles, Calif. with Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects of Charlottesville, Va. The Memorial will be located at the crash site near Shanksville, Pa. where Flight 93 crashed on September 11, 2001.

?EUR??,,????'??Given that symbols are the stock-in-trade of memorial designers, Murdoch is guilty of at least a degree of naivete about his plan’s potential for controversy,?EUR??,,????'?? the L.A. Times wrote.

?EUR??,,????'??But he’s also right to complain that his design, expected to cost more than $30 million, is being considered in a hothouse. The politics of Sept. 11, as he puts it, have become ?EUR??,,????'??so highly charged it’s hysterical. I mean that in the true sense of the word. This is hysteria. I feel like I’ve walked into a war.?EUR??,,????'???”