The architect of the Flight 93 National Memorial explains the purpose of its open-ended design to OliviaNuzzi
The Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Photo: Keith Srakocic/AP/Shutterstock Paul Murdoch did not set out to heal the wound in the Earth, but to preserve it as a scar. The architect of the Flight 93 National Memorial has spent most of the last two decades refining in meticulous detail his plans to honor the 40 people killed when al-Qaeda hijackers flew a passenger jet into an empty field in the Allegheny Mountains on September 11, 2001.
The challenge of the memorial was to reflect the complexities of what happened — tragedy and triumph, life stolen and life protected in the same motion — as well as address the contradiction of the heavenly landscape with the evil of what unfolded here. Achieving this, Murdoch said, was not about having some kind of grand vision, or ideas for a highbrow statement.
The Wall of Names at the Flight 93 National Memorial. Photo: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images “I believe that there needs to be a certain abstraction to the forms because they need to be accessible to a lot of different types of people, whereas if it’s something that’s very specific and figural, how many ways are there to interpret that?” The sparseness of his sculptures and structures, he said, is about keeping open the possibility of varied interpretations.
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