Memorial Design Comes Full Circle Architect Remembers Liberation, Commemorates American Will

An Austrian-born architect who remembers smiling GIs liberating his Alpine village will design the national memorial to the Americans who helped win World War II, President Clinton announced Friday.

The winning design, a low-slung ensemble of circling columns, a central waterfall connecting two reflecting pools and a carpet of hundreds of thousands of white roses, was submitted by Friedrich St. Florian, a professor and former dean at the Rhode Island School of Design.

St. Florian’s design will be built at a central location on the National Mall with views of the Capitol, the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.

The target date for dedicating the memorial is Veterans Day in the year 2000. But achieving that goal depends on the success of a $100 million fund-raising effort.

The monument will be built on a 7.4-acre rectangle at the heart of the Mall. To be constructed of limestone and granite, it consists of two half circles of 40-foot-high columns surrounding a large memorial plaza lowered 15 feet below the surface.

The columns will be more than 6 feet in diameter and each will represent a state.

“They will be free-standing to represent the autonomy of the states but presented together to represent the collective will of the American people,” St. Florian said at a briefing at the National Press Club.

St. Florian said that although he originally intended the outward facing walls to be glass, he instantly adopted a landscape architect’s suggestion that they instead form giant beds for a year-round display of hardy white roses to symbolize those lost in the war.