Maya lin was just 21 years old when she beat out 1,400  competitors to design the vietnam veterans memorial.  Even though she was just an architecture student at Yale, she took up on a class challenge to make an entry on a national design competition.  The memorial is outside and made up of two perpendicular black granite walls.  These  walls are  inscribed  with  more  than  58,0000  names  of vietnam  veterans. Lin wanted the Memorial to  show that they can never come back and should be remembered. The Black granite walls are set in the side of the earth to look like a wound that is healing.  The design  works that the long black walls point to the lincoln and washington memorial. I really like this design as it can be so simple yet be so powerful and moving.