What Matters: September 2002
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Lessons for September 11
By Paul Spreiregen '54
8:46 am, September 11, 2002. Throughout America we will stand with bowed heads. We will remember the tragedy that occurred a year before, when AA 11 struck the north tower of the World Trade Center. Again we will gesture in remembrance at 9:03 am when UA 175 struck the second tower. And still a third time, at 9:38 am, when AA 77 struck the Pentagon. Finally, at 10:43 am, with the crash of UA 93 in Somerset County, the nation will complete its tribute to the more than 3,000 victims of September 11.
We will likely commemorate September 11 for years to come. It may be a unique ceremony, commemorating four acts joined by violent purpose in three different places.
Those future ceremonies will be living memorials to September 11, a major component of remembering, for the effectiveness of a memorial lies in its power to make us think. It remains to be seen what physical memorials will be erected on the sites of the September 11 attacks and how effective they will be.
The World Trade Center redevelopment plan will include a memorial—its only certainty at present. A competition for a Pentagon memorial is under way at this writing, but there yet is no word of a memorial in Somerset County.
In all these opportunities nothing has been said about the three memorials having a conjoining theme, an idea that would seem obvious. Certainly a WTC site plan and the designs for three memorials are all worthy subjects for design competitions.
Design competitions for memorials are as old as architecture, their purpose as much to commemorate accomplishment as tragedy. Among the outstanding American memorials of the last century are the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.—again, based on their power to make us think. The Lincoln Memorial was the result of a competitive process between two preeminent designers. The St. Louis arch and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial were the result of open design competitions, both similar in organization and management. I was professional adviser for the latter design competition. My experience might be instructive.
As a young architect the last thing I imagined I'd do was run competitions—entering, of course, but never running them. Further from my thoughts were memorials. My interest in competitions began in school, which revolves around competition. After MIT, studying and traveling, I realized that countries that utilized well-managed and frequent competitions also had a high quality of architecture. Good competitions not only disclose new talent and broaden the envelope of design possibility; as important, they elevate the public expectation of design. I also developed great respect for the power of memorials, particularly those in Italy related to WWII. Many of America's most important architectural works have been produced through competitions, but American competition practice has been highly inconsistent.
As the first director of architecture and design programs, 1966-1970, at the infant National Endowment for the Arts, I tried to interest the NEA in design competitions. The NEA's council would have none of it, reflecting the disparate reputation of competitions. In the late '70s I embarked on an extensive research program, investigating many past design competitions and wrote a book on the subject (Design Competitions, McGraw Hill, 1979). I also chaired a committee of the American Institute of Architects, producing a Handbook for Architectural Competitions.
In April 1979, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund was founded by Jan Scruggs, a Vietnam veteran. The VVMF soon came to include a small group of other veterans, many of them graduates of West Point or the Naval Academy, all competent and dedicated. In July 1980, Congress authorized a memorial on the Mall, for which the VVMF decided to hold a competition. The VVMF contacted me in July 1980. I saw this as a needed opportunity to honor the service and lives of the soldiers we had lost and do so by running a model competition. I had no illusions about the likelihood of achieving anything. At the time the American public wanted to forget Vietnam.
We started by planning the entire process in detail. The plan had four main phases, altogether to take eleven months. The first was planning and preparation, from July through September 1980. In the second, through December, we announced the competition and responded to inquiries from potential competitors. The third phase was the design work by the competitors, ending in March 1981. The fourth entailed receiving the designs, displaying them, selection of a winning design by a design jury, and announcing the result. It concluded in May 1981.
The preparation phase involved formulating the program for the memorial, consulting with the three principal government agencies that would approve the design (the National Park Service, the National Capital Planning Commission, and the Commission of Fine Arts), selecting a jury of designers to assess the design submissions, and preparing the informational documents.
The competition announcement, beginning in October, resulted in over 5,000 inquiries. By late December there were 2,573 registrations—a most assuring indication of interest. All fifty states were represented.
The design phase, beginning in early January, was the heart of the process. Each competitor was allowed two 30" x 40" panels and was required to show a plan, an elevation, and a section at a scale of 1" = 30'. A brief explanatory text and other optional illustrations were encouraged, All lettering was to be done by hand. These conditions placed all competitors on an equal basis, young and old, experienced and novice, large firms or small.
For the fourth phase we received 1,432 design submissions, a record still not exceeded. I examined each of the submissions for compliance, to get a sense of overall quality, and to gauge the effort required of the jury. All designs were displayed at a hangar at Andrews Air Force Base for juror and later public viewing. Altogether they comprised a linear mile and a third of display and required three and a half hours simply to see, walking by slowly.
The jury evaluation took place over five days, April 27 to May 1, 1981. The jury consisted of eight persons, seven eminent American designers and one noted environmental design journalist. I had recommended all of them and all were interviewed individually by the VVMF. The eight jurors represented the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, and sculpture. The two architects were Pietro Belluschi HM, former Dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning (1950-65), and Harry Weese '38. The two landscape architects were Hideo Sasaki and Garret Eckbo. The three sculptors were Costantino Nivola, Richard Hunt, and James Rosati. The journalist was Grady Clay. The eight were highly respected, highly accomplished, and the most collegial, veritable senior gray eminences of American design.
They began on Monday morning by reviewing the design program. They then looked individually at all the designs. Harry Weese '38 returned to our impromptu lounge after three and a half hours and said, "Paul, there are two designs out there that could do it." Pietro Belluschi HM, the elder of the jury, completed his viewing the next day. On the second day the jury examined the designs together, walking the many aisles and stopping at each of the 232 designs that had been flagged by one or more of the jurors. This first cut was further reduced to 90 by midday Wednesday. By Thursday morning it was down to 39. That afternoon the winning design was selected. Space does not allow a proper description of the jury's deliberative process, other than to say that it was the most thoughtful and thorough discussion of design that I have ever heard, and I have heard many.
Grady Clay and I composed an explanation to the VVMF for the next day, Friday, May 1. It consisted of remarks by the jury members, which Grady had noted. They are a treasure of design insight, and included many prescient thoughts as to how the memorial would likely be experienced. No less remarkable was the choice of the design in view of the deceptive childishness of its graphic depiction. A non-professional jury would never have chosen it.
At noon about thirty members of the VVMF assembled to hear the jury's recommendation. Grady and I made the presentation, based on Grady's notes. It took 25 minutes. There was a brief silence. Then Jan Scruggs rose, came forward, gestured towards us and proclaimed, "I like it!" Immediately, everyone from the VVMF jumped to their feet in a joyous expression of acceptance, hugging each other in congratulation. At that moment I felt that the design had a chance of being realized.
This process was the end of a beginning, and the next chapters came to constitute still another and far better known story, mainly a bitter controversy, eventually resolved through the intervention of Sen. Mathias of Maryland and Sen. Warner of Virginia. Less known are the many who made critical contributions throughout the effort. Among them is architect Andrus Burr. As instructor for an undergraduate design studio at Yale in the fall of 1980, he assigned the Vietnam Memorial as a class project, and organized the studio review panel in which Maya Lin's design was refined into its minimalist form, the design having originated as an architectural pun on the domino theory.
The controversy overshadowed what I had hoped would be a model procedure for emulation in future competitions. And future competitions there were, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial competition arguably a stimulus to many subsequently, but alas without the same proven procedures. Those subsequent competitions would have produced even better results had they done so. The September 11 competitions would clearly benefit.
September 11 is not the only potential beneficiary. Though the interests of the public are the reason for all design, the personal hopes of the Swedish architect Ragnar Ostburg are particularly stirring. Ostburg won the competition for the Stockholm Town Hall held between 1902 and 1905. Completed in 1923, it has become a beloved symbol of the city, and the site for all but one of the Nobel Prize award ceremonies. Ostburg later wrote:
"At the office days lagged on in gray monotony, from time to time relieved by frequent competitions, sometimes resulting in a prize, though usually not, or by the week-ends, which afforded opportunities for architectural studies in various parts of my own country. But I was still kept waiting for the great chance."
About the Author
Paul Spreiregen received a bachelor's degree from the MIT School of Architecture and Planning in 1954. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Italy and worked there and in Sweden. He worked in various parts of the United States in architecture and urban design. He was the director of urban design programs at the American Institute of Architects from 1962-66, and the first director of architecture programs at the National Endowment for the Arts, 1966-70. He has since been in private practice in architecture and urban design. He has also taught and lectured throughout the country. He is the author, coauthor, or editor of about a dozen books on design and author of numerous articles on design. From 1972-84 he wrote and broadcast a weekly design commentary for National Public Radio. He has also run a number of design competitions, the best known being for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. He has been honored by four professional design societies.
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