Shanksville, Pennsylvania, USA
LA-based architect Paul Murdoch and his team were commissioned to design the Flight 93 National Memorial to commemorate the 40 heroes on Flight 93 who gave their lives thwarting a terrorist attack on the U.S. capital.
The memorial site is the first national park of the 21st century which was formerly a coalmine, that Murdoch transformed into a designed memorial landscape.
The project has been awarded a 2021 American Architecture Award from The Chicago Athenaeum and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
The Flight 93 National Memorial is a new 2,200-acre national park at the site in Western Pennsylvania where United Flight 93 crashed on September 11, 2001.
The memorial design contours the land and enhances the physical features of the site for expressive power.
The goal is a seamless visitor experience in a choreographed sequence of commemorative, cultural, and natural spaces ultimately leading to the edge of the crash site, the focal point for the entire memorial experience.
The plane crashed at the edge of an open field in front of a grove of hemlock trees that absorbed the inferno of the crash.
The distinct structure of the trees, with its straight, tall trunk and alternating angled branches, is the inspiration for the design motif expressed in materials throughout the memorial and visitor center.
The open field, a bowl-shaped landform and backfilled open-pit coal mine is interpreted as a Field of Honor through re-grading and commemorative plantings in a formal arrangement of forty groves.
A maple allée defines the inner ring of the landscaped circle, responding to the circular form of the Bowl and forming a gesture of collective public embrace of the final resting place of forty heroes.
A visitor center is located between two ascending concrete memorial walls where the flight path crosses the edge of the Field of Honor.
The siting of the visitor center emphasizes the poignancy of this intersection and offers panoramic views of the memorial landscape.
The long, tall concrete site walls conceal approaching views of the Field of Honor from parking.
A long entrance walkway aligned with the flight path collects visitors from buses and parking, leading first to a comfort station and a learning center for visitor orientation and special programs.
The walkway leads visitors through tall narrow portals to an overlook of the expansive field and crash site below.
The Visitor Center provides an interpretation of the actions of the passengers and crew on Flight 93 and the events that occurred on September 11, 2001.
It is an integral part of the memorial landscape, offering narrative content and
interpretation as part of the overall flow of the visitor experience.
From the visitor center, a walk east through the formal tree-lined path or west from the learning center down a meandering trail leads to the crash site and wall of inscribed names of the passengers and crew.
The memorial site extends north from the crash site and Field of Honor several miles to the park entrance from a state highway.
Marking the entrance is the Tower of Voices, a 93-feet tall musical sculpture holding forty wind chimes commemorating the forty passengers and crew through a living memorial in sound.
Project: Flight 93 National Memorial
Architects: Paul Murdoch Architects
Client: National Park Service
Contractor: AECOM
Photographers: Eric Staudenmaier Photography
