lynette design

Maya Lin - Between art and architecture

Maya Lin's approach to designing an experience in the Vietnam war memorial started with her personal feelings and reactions. She ended up being chosen as the design to be built from thousands, and yet she said she "designed it for me... what I believed it should be."

Her design process started with asking questions about what is a memorial, and what should it do. She thought about and researched these questions. Thinking about the design of an experience, she looked at other memorial designs that she found extrememly moving - that had honesty about the reality of war and loss of life, and remembering those who died. She conciously decided not to research the Vietnam war and politics about it. I think this is an interesting point - to deliberately decide not to research something that seems like it would be something you would need to research. Because she wanted to make the memorial an experience that everyone would respond to.

Names and the inscription of names were important to her. She had personal experiences with finding the inscriptions of names a moving and powerful experience, and this is something that many people find a powerful experience too. I think this comes back to that Maya Lin's design process was very personal to her, but that her experience also makes a design that many people also find powerful and moving.

After some research and thinking she then realised she needed to actually see the site. I think this is important in her design process of creating an experience. When she was there she said she felt instinctively to carve and cut into the earth. She has a personal instinct of what to do, and it is then built upon and developed into her idea, which makes a rich layered expereince at the memorial.

She made various design choices to make relective surfaces, chronological listing of names, small typeface etc. that she chose to make certain experiences in visitors to the memorial. She had a clear vision of why these choices needed to be made, and she had to be very insistant to make sure they were built. I think she had a good overall picture of the experience she wanted to create, and then she chose details to enhance the overall idea. This seems a good idea for me to remember to keep an overall picture of what experience I'm trying to create while chosing the small details.

I found it very interesting that she observed that she was probably more controversial by not taking sides politically. Because she tried to stay neutral, no-one was on her side, she was even more controversial than if she had have taken a side.

posted by nicole @ 11:35 am