The Vietnam Veterans' Memorial is one of the most popular memorials in Washington DC. The American architect, Maya Ying Lin submitted this drawing as one in a competition with 1421 other designs, one of the largest architectural competitions ever. Lin was an undergraduate at Yale when she submitted her design for two 247-foot walls that submerged ten feet under grade and pointed to the Lincoln and Washington Memorials.

In her competition entry, Lin said, "Walking through this park-like area, the memorial appears as a rift in the earth - a long, polished black stone wall, emerging from and receding into the earth. Approaching the memorial, the ground slopes gently downward, and the low walls emerging on either side, growing out of the earth, extend and converge at a point below and ahead. Walking into the grassy site contained by the walls of this memorial, we can barely make out the carved names upon the memorial's walls. These names, seemingly infinite in number, convey the sense of overwhelming numbers, while unifying these individuals into a whole..."

There have been countless interpretations of her design that reflect on the design's powerful simplicity and the emotional complexity of its meaning. At the core of the design is the is the unavoidable truth that the cost of war is human life.

Popularly known as the Wall, this communal gravestone had personalized the war in a way that television could not. It has become a profound national symbol and a point of reference for a new tradition of American memorial structures that name the individual dead, reviving public interest in and support for this building form.

Lin was just 21 years old at the time and admits she worried that her professional life had peaked before it had properly started. Lin was born in Ohio in 1959 and after completing her Master's at Yale, opened her own design studio.

Medium : Reproductions are made from a scan of the original competition submission

Created/Published : 1980 or 1981

Creator : Maya Ying Lin, architect, 1959 -

Part of the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial Fund Records and housed in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress.

Availability: Usually ships in 1 week

Product #: ppmsca09504