Alec Rawls blogged The redesigned flight 93 memorial, announced today, still contains all of the features that made it a terrorist memorial. Architect Paul Murdoch's infamous red crescent is still there, still planted with red maple trees, still inscribed in the exact same circle as before, and with the same two crescent tips still intact. Thus the crescent bisector defined by these crescent tips is also the same as before. It still points almost exactly to Mecca, making the crescent a Mihrab (an Islamic prayer station, where the believer faces into a crescent, towards Mecca, to perform his ritual prostrations). The design still incorporates a separate upper terrorist-memorial wall, centered precisely on the red-maple crescent. There are still 44 translucent blocks on the flight path to the crash site, matching the total number of dead, instead of just the forty translucent blocks that are dedicated to the forty murdered Americans. Lastly, the Tower of Voices part of the memorial is still an Islamic prayer-time sundial.
It sounds like the designer is so wrapped up in his design that he is just making minor adjustments to try to fool the American public to accept his design.Start with the red crescent. In the original design, the lower crescent tip was defined by the furthest extent of red maple trees on the bottom, while the upper crescent tip was defined by the end of the inner of two concrete walls, between which trees were planted. In the redesign, the lower tip remains exactly as before. So does the upper crescent tip (the end of the inner concrete wall). The change is that there are now additional trees planted beyond the end of the concrete wall that defines the upper crescent tip. These additional trees, planted along and out from the circle line, make it look like there is now a bowl instead of a crescent, but both original crescent tips are still in place. The filling in of some trees, in places that blend the original crescent into its surroundings, but do not affect its defining characteristics, is apparently the only change in the entire "redesign." All of the original features of the terrorist-memorial remain. The new graphics show that there is still the same separate upper section of memorial wall as before. Like the lower wall, it lies along the flight path to the crash site. Just as the lower wall contains 40 translucent blocks, dedicated to the forty murdered Americans, so too does the upper section of memorial wall contain translucent blocks.
There is a lot more information at his site
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