In 1989 a national competition was held for the design of a memorial to veterans of the Korean War to be sited on the National Mall directly across from the Maya Lin designed Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
The memorial design submitted by John Lucas Architect (in collaboration with three colleagues: architect Don Leon and landscape architects Veronica Lucas and Eliza Pennypacker) was selected by a panel of veterans and professional design consultants from nearly 600 entries.
The memorial expresses the gratitude of all Americans to the one and one half million men and women who bravely served the cause of freedom in that conflict. It is experienced within the symbolic surrounds of our nation’s capitol, creating closure to the cruciform pattern of memorials organized around the main axis of original city planner L’Enfant’s baroque urban layout. The design intention is to lead the visitor on an epic and solemn journey. Approached from across the Mall, the visitor begins to see an elusive, dream-like presence of ghostly figures crossing a remote landscape. One enters into a west plaza containing a white marble inlay from which a red granite line originates. The line extends eastward along the center of a path rising toward a distant horizon and the American flag. The column of larger than life figures are now seen as solid, dense and powerful, moving forward and upward toward that horizon. The visitor ascends with the thirty-eight through a rugged landscape, a shallow film of rushing water noisily cascading a rocky plain to each side. At the crest, the water is still and silent. There is a second marble inlay at this place of pause; the visitor looks down into the ceremonial public gathering space, symbolic of our egalitarian home, and continues to follow the red line on a quicker descent terminating at a final white square and the American flag. Here a wall is revealed that defines the space and bears images and dedications honoring all acts of service in the Korean War.
Like Cathedrals, Pyramids and the Acropolis, memorials are “theatres of memory”.
John Lucas Architect