Posted on 09/11/2005 9:53:59 PM PDT by daviddennis
Four years ago to this day, United Airlines Flight 93 was flying over unremarkable farmland near Somerset, Pennsylvania. Inside the plane there was chaos, as the passengers started to organize their legendary resistance.
“Let’s Roll,” said Todd Beamer, as he and his fellows charged into the cockpit of the enormous jet. Here is where they and the other passengers are now resting forever.
This is not a political memorial. I see no racism, no attacks on Islam, just a moving tribute to a much-beloved group of people.
There has been a great controversy about the idea of a permanent memorial, a more formal building than the informal set of flags and tributes you see here. And yet somehow I think the flags and tributes came straight from the hearts of real people, both friends of the passengers and local residents bringing moving sympathy for those who died.
As a result, it seems fitting today to record the memorial as it is. Perhaps next year there will be a beautiful, soaring glossy structure over this place, but it will not be as moving as these simple tributes I saw today.
And so, without further ado, here they are: Pictures of the feelings and love of a people.
I hope we can change it. Hell, look at the fiasco with the 9/11 tribute for New York. It has become so damn political just like this sad situation in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. If a Dem was president was in office you would not be seeing this. It's just sad.
One more thing: the design includes the "Tower of Voices" which is a tall structure containing wailing resonate wind pipes. Perhaps this is to help one's thoughts gently drift off to the minaret filled land of Mecca and Medina.
Oh yeah, here is one last bit from the office project's website: "The Flight 93 National Memorial Design Competition has been funded through the generous support of the Heinz Endowments and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation."
I'm trying to send the following message on the site, but it is saying site is NOT FOUND, figures.
Is this memorial design some kind of sick joke? You simply HAVE to be kidding. A RED CRESCENT! How gulible and stupid do you think people are? This is an OBVIOUS symbol of Islam and is a defacement of the beautiful American landscape. The designer most certainly is ant-American and I am not sure how the families of the dead were duped to go along with this atrocity, but just know, that most thinking Americans are well aware of what this politically correct sickening display really is. Those of us who truly honor the heroes of Flight 93, will not allow this to stand without a fight.
You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.
Disgusting!
Paul Murdoch defends the design.
"A crescent is part of architectural vocabulary. It's a generic form used in design," said Paul Murdoch, one of the winning architects. "We don't see any one group having ownership of it."
"Crescent of Embrace" features an arc of maple trees that will turn red each fall.
Murdoch believes it's unfortunate that the design is being interpreted that way.
"You can call it all kinds of things. We can call it an arc. We can call it a circle. We can call it the edge of the bowl. The label doesn't matter to us in terms of intent.
"We have no objection to calling it something else."
Murdoch did say they have no intentions of changing the design.
The reason the circle of trees is not completed, he said, is because it was severed by the path of Flight 93. From that opening, visitors will be able to gaze down on what has been called the "Sacred Ground," where some of the remains of the passengers and crew still rest.
******
Paul Murdoch's firm is committed to its involvement in creating sustainable design. Sustainable design, as defined by Wikipedia, is "the art of designing physical objects to comply with the principles of economic, social, and ecological sustainability."
Paul Murdoch...
A primary task of this generation is to create new patterns of development that sustain human habitation on this planet. Towards this end, the principles adopted for our practice are intended to ensure that each project contributes to an overall goal of environmental responsibility while striving for design excellence. As architects, we are uniquely qualified to help formulate and translate policy into tangible form; mitigating pressures of urbanity with the need to heal the natural environment. Each design solution is seen as a contribution to the human condition; as it exists today and evolves into future generations.
Our goal is to define and study problems both in terms of clients’ direct needs and relative to long term effects on natural and man made surroundings. More than problem solving however, we aspire to emotionally affect and uplift our lives through poetry and beauty.
It is through these transcendent qualities that we optimistically strive for ways to enrich life and fulfill our original purpose for engaging in the practice of architecture.
BTTT. Post #40 is definitely interesting. Looks like we're getting snookered.
No, they are being punked.
Todd Beamer is rolling over and puking in his grave (which just so happens to lay right next to this crescent abomination.)
HUH? I don't even know what that means. These supposed "professional" architects ought to be smart enough to know that anything even remotely resembling a symbol of Islam would be a bad idea. There is no way to convince me that it is completely benign. Who do they think they are kidding, honestly?
Please tell me that's a joke. Please.
Well, with FReepers on the case, the jig is up. Dan Rather was just the first to fall victim of the pajamahadeen.
Paul Murdoch responded to their criticism by saying, "each design solution is seen as a contribution to the human condition; as it exists today and evolves into future generations."
******
The winning design, produced by Paul Murdoch Architects, begins with a "Tower of Voices" that houses 40 wind chimes, different in scale and pitch for each of the victims.
A pedestrian walkway leads to a maple-tree-lined bowl, created by the partly excavated mine, and carries on to the "Sacred Ground" - the actual crash site - which will be planted with wildflowers year-round.
"The memorial is not telling you how you should feel; it's open," said Hamilton Peterson, president of the Families of Flight 93, whose father and stepmother were killed in the crash. "Walt Whitman said that nature prefers freedom and variety, and that's the spirit we wanted."
A black slate plaza and sloped wall will provide public viewing, while a special walkway will allow family members access to the field. The names of the passengers and crew will be etched on white marble.
The memorial will spread over 2,000 acres. A preamble to the memorial will read, A common field one day. A field of honor forever.
I am not an architect, but when I first read this, I did a Google search of online architectural glossaries. NOT ONE OF THEM LISTED THE WORD "CRESCENT." NOT ONE.
If it is used in an architectural sense, it certainly is not used widely and certainly could not credibly be called "generic."
I smell a rat.
Flight 93 Memorial: A Slap at Christians in America
By A.M. Siriano
Sep 10, 2005
snip
The Los Angeles-based architect who submitted this disgraceful design is Paul Murdoch, who insists that no connection to Islam was intended, that his memorial is “not about religion, per se,” but is to be a spiritual, sacred place open to all. So is all this much ado about nothing, a mere coincidence?
If you believe that, then you don’t understand the nature of artists, which is what architects are. (Try to debate with them that they are not; you will get an earful.)
snip
Architects—good ones like Paul Murdoch and his design crew—are fully aware of the symbolism that they put into their work. The first order of business is to make money, of course, which is why their design incorporates various half-religious notions of sacredness and healing, which appeal to people’s sentimentalism. But no one can tell me that it never crossed their minds that the Crescent is the symbol of Islam, just as the Cross is the symbol of Christianity. (Neither started out that way: the Crescent was originally a pagan symbol, and the Cross was a favorite torture device of the Romans.)
As one observer noted, plastering a Crescent across the landscape in tribute to the heroes of Flight 93—to be seen clearly from the air—is like building a memorial to the Holocaust victims in the form of a Swastika. Or imagine the furor had we built the Pearl Harbor Memorial in a pattern that reminded us of the Japanese war flag, with planes and ships extending, beam-like, from a central orb.
The presence of “minaret” in the Memorial design is barely apparent, but only because, living in a non-Islamic nation, we have no need to take note of its function: it is used by the muezzin (crier) to call the faithful to turn toward Mecca and pray. The minaret, five times a day, literally becomes a “tower of voices.” Is connecting the Flight 93 Memorial tower to an Islamic minaret a stretch? Not with the Crescent symbol in proximity.
snip
http://tinyurl.com/b5fjk
Who is the U.S. Rep in that district? In that part of the state, it has *got* to be a Republican. I think that might be a good place to start building an outcry.
I wouldn't deface it myself either. But I think there are those who might would if the crescent is there.
Nelson Byrd Woltz is a full service twenty-person landscape architecture firm based in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1985 by University of Virginia faculty member Warren Byrd and partner Susan Nelson, the firm has maintained a commitment to education while engaging in a broad range of public and private projects.
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