This is in memory of the children, women and men who died at the Pentagon on 9/11/01. The Heart of this memorial is a great table set for the 184 who will not show. Like any other table at the center of our lives, it is a place for eating, drinking, reflecting and a place for debate. Unlike a tombstone or a memorial plaque, it not only remembers the dead, it invites the visitor to take a seat, to participate and to contemplate the freedoms and responsibilities of citizenship in a democratic society. From the site’s edge the visitor descends into the earth down paths of thick hedges to the space of the memorial – a floating platform that is detached from the earth and structures around it. On one side is a hedge animated with birds. On the other is a stone wall hazy with reflections of the Pentagon that cossets our memory of the violence. At the center is a giant table, a blackened bronze monolith engraved with names and rubbed bright by the elbows that have come to read them. Hand carved seats, each different, mark and hold a place at the table. Inspired by “Ode to the Table” by Pablo Neruda (see the poem at the end of this slide show), this project was chosen as one of 6 finalists from 1,126 entries in the 9/11 Pentagon Memorial Design Competition.