The Inner Studio - Riverside Architectural Press

THE INNER STUDIO
we are successful, we may be able to turn a liability into a creative
experience we can learn from.
Maya Lyn, The Viet Nam Memorial
This project brought into the world a modern way of making
contact with the shadow. War is by definition destructive, but the
Viet Nam War was a conflict that sent waves of division right
through the American psyche. It divided nations, communities,
and families. It left us shaken because it challenged our very definitions
of victory and defeat. When the time came to establish some
kind of memorial to this war, the demands placed on the design
were as fraught as the experience of the war itself. Of necessity, the
Viet Nam memorial required a space and symbol that could safely
contain many different kinds of anguish. It could be not a war
monument that celebrated victory, but a monument that could
contain healing. For the American people to find closure, there
would need to be acceptance of the complex of experiences of the
whole psyche. And it could not simply honor the nationalism or
the special adrenaline of war but offer a place to reflect on conflict
and seek resolution. Who would visit this place? Curious
Americans. Families–brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, cousins,
friends, and colleagues–touched directly or indirectly by loss and
by shades of conflict. This monument had to declare and shelter a
position that could include all who have been touched by the
memories and actions of war. It needed to be able to hold this sad,
angry array of emotions for future generations.
The site for the Viet Nam Memorial is a special part of
Washington, DC: the Mall. The Mall is an attempt to formalize the
essence of America, what the built world would look like if it were
the American ideal. The Mall is about perfection, or at least about
the possibility of a perfect country, in which every individual is an
ambitious yet thoughtful self-governing citizen whose voice can be
heard through free speech and the vote, a country blessed with
natural wealth and robust energy. The Mall is a unified geometric
campus of supremely confident white neo-classical buildings.
There have been slight exceptions made, such as the aerospace
museum, but even these exceptions are in the spirit of neoclassi-
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