Flight 93 National Memorial Completes in Pennsylvania

THE final phase of the Flight 93 National Memorial was completed in Pennsylvania last week. Now, a time-lapse showing its construction - which took eight years in total - has been released by EarthCam.

The Flight 93 National Memorial commemorates the 40 passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 93, who fought for control of the aircraft after it was hijacked by terrorists on 11 September 2001.

Above: The site of the Flight 93 National Memorial before the construction of Tower of Voices. Below: The visitor centre completed in 2015 (images courtesy of Paul Murdoch Architects).

A temporary memorial was built near the crash site soon after the attacks and in 2005 Los Angeles-based Paul Murdoch Architects won a competition to design a permanent monument.

Their proposal includes a wall of names commemorating each individual passenger, a visitor centre, a honeybee meadow and the Tower of Voices, a 93-feet tall wind chime.

The 2,200 acre memorial is funded by 112,000 private donors who raised USD $46 million.

Above: Construction on the Tower of Voices began in 2017 (image courtesy of National Parks Service).

The Tower of Voices is the last phase of the memorial to finish construction, and was opened to the public last week.

The tower's structure incorporates 40 aluminium tubes, representing the 40 passengers and crew who died, and 15-25 pound stainless steel chime strikers.

Above: The wind chimes were designed using computer simulation and scale mock-ups (image courtesy of National Parks Service).

During the design process, the architects teamed-up with musician and tuning theorist Sam Pellman to conceive the wind chimes' pitch at both harmonious and discordant scales in order to represent the members' of the crew and passengers' struggle as well as the violence and tragedy.