The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released more information June 11 about its design competition for a memorial to honor the victims of the attack on the Pentagon. Pentagon Renovation Program Manager Walker Lee Evey, and Carol Anderson-Austra, Corps project manager for the memorial, made the announcement at a Pentagon press conference exactly nine months after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The Corps launched the open, two-stage design competition to select a design for the memorial, which will be located on the grounds of the Pentagon near the impact site. At the press conference, Anderson-Austra emphasized that any individual or team may enter.

"There are many ways to select a memorial design," Anderson-Austra said. "The high level of interest in the memorial from the beginning of the project indicated that a competition open to everyone was the way to find the best design." She said her team has received several hundred inquiries from school children to architecture students to well-established architecture and engineering firms. The Corps has a $2 million construction budget, Anderson-Austra said. "We're really looking for vision, an artistic vision, not a plan," Anderson-Austra said at the press conference.

The entries will be evaluated by a nine-member jury, which will work in an advisory capacity and include representatives from academia, landscape architects, architects, an artist, a representative of the families, and noted public representatives, Anderson-Austra said. She also reiterated the importance of maintaining a geographic, professional, gender, and racial balance.

The Corps has met regularly with a family steering committee as well as a focus group made up of representatives of the military services and all the Pentagon offices to pick a site and develop plans for the memorial.

Competition instructions will be available next week by calling toll-free, 866-782-4383, or visiting the Pentagon Memorial project Web site. The competition program will include submission requirements, site description, and other directions. The deadline for submissions is September 11, 2002.

Pentagon reconstruction
Earlier in the day, Pentagon renovation chief Evey placed a dedication capsule behind a charred slab of limestone that was damaged when terrorists flew an American Airlines jet into the Pentagon. The limestone is engraved with the date of the attacks and was fitted as the final piece of the building's western façade by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.

Now that the exterior of the outer ring, or "E-ring," is complete, Evey said it's the Pentagon's expectation to have the portion of the Pentagon where the jetliner hit the building occupied by the morning of September 11, 2002. He said they have already moved about 2,000 people back into the building on either side of the Phoenix Project.

Cost estimates for the project, Evey said, run at about $500 million, down from the original figure of $740 million. "We've been successful in negotiating prices down and achieving very effective capability, performance out of our contractors, and so we're very pleased with those numbers."

It was reported that nearly 2.1 million pounds of limestone were quarried and cut in Southern Indiana to make the slabs required for the exterior of the building.

Copyright 2002 The American Institute of Architects. All rights reserved.