When I first saw the United States World War 2 Memorial design I was disappointed, I felt as if its presence in the National Mall would be overwhelming, that unlike recent memorials to the Vietnam and Korean Wars its presence would destroy the axial relationship between the Washington and Lincoln Memorials, two unmistakable American icons that rule the western Mall. With this attitude I was not surprised to hear and read all those common, negative reviews of the memorial in the architecture press.

The difference between what you see in pictures and print versus what was built is amazing. What most reviews seem to ignore is the space itself. The existing, renovated fountain has now become a wonderful place on the Mall, one with picture postcard views of those two more famous nearby memorials and one that somehow doesn't intrude on the relationship between them. The central plaza of the memorial is dropped below grade while those two colonnades are pushed back far enough as to not destroy the long views from either. That space, now alive with visitors, is the saving grace of the memorial.

The design of the memorial itself by Friedrich St Florain, a US architect from Providence, Rhode Island is certainly inoffensive and feels as if it may have always been there. It consists of columns with attached metal wreaths, each representing states and territories that sent US citizens into war, as well as two larger pavilions representing the Atlantic and Pacific theatres. The language of the memorial makes it look as if it was built in the same time frame as the rest of the other major US Memorials and not 2004, something which is reasonable considering the warm feelings the US has towards the war and its "greatest generation." This is for the people who stormed Normandy in Saving Private Ryan as much as it is for any real soldier (US actor Tom Hanks played an important public relation role in getting the monument built). This memorial is about victory and not about victims.

Maya Lin's nearby Vietnam War Memorial was the first US Memorial that addressed individuals killed and the idea of loss. It has become so successful that minimalism has become the language of depressing memorials everywhere. If you look at Lin's other well known memorial to the US Civil Rights Movement or to the much discussed World Trade Center Memorial Competition (where Lin was an influential juror), you see minimalist, contemplative and depressing spaces. I love the Vietnam War Memorial, it's an extraordinarily powerful experience but it's also pretty damn depressing. Americans do not and would not want to be depressed about World War 2, their collective great victory.

If the memorial was designed in a "modern" language it would not fit in its surroundings, it would begin to overpower them. Even though the World War 2 Memorial is unobtrusive from the Lincoln and Washington Memorials, it is visible. Its language and materials help it to feel as if it had always been there. Criticism of the memorial simply because it does not use a "modern" language is invalid because it fails to address those contextual issues of such an important site, while criticism of the prominence of the site becomes invalid based on American sentiment regarding the importance and "goodness" of World War 2. The built memorial may feel safe, but it also somehow feels right.

Where the Memorial fails is in its actual relationship to World War 2. The inoffensive symbolism of the design is not strong enough to convey what really happened. The experience is more akin to a memorial about a single victorious battle than an entire war that involved so many countries and the fate of so many. There aren't that many veterans still alive, an 18 year old soldier in 1941 is over 80, in twenty or thirty years there will be none still alive. What will be left is a big fountain, a place to hang out for a while and a nice place for tourists to stop and take pictures of the Lincoln and Washington Memorials. A great opportunity to somehow convey everything that was sacrificed and everything that was put at risk was lost in exchange for something inoffensive.