Hey hey! Welcome all builders and fans!
This Special Edition of Building Realities highlights the members of my family who served in our Armed Forces. I’ll be telling you about the monument and its relationship with worldbuilding.
On the Lincoln Memorial plaza, temporary architecture meets collective memory in a remarkably modern way. The National Military Monument erected for America’s 250th commemorations relies on structural innovation rather than carved granite to tell its story.
Standing eighteen feet high, two double-sided flag installations mirror the limestone aesthetic of neighboring monuments while embedding 528 high-definition LED screens that form the stripes of fluttering flags. Instead of static engravings, names of over forty-one million service members scroll continuously across these surfaces, displaying thousands of records in rotating forty-five-second windows.
The interplay between scale and intimacy defines the experience. While the installation pays homage to centuries of military history, its digital architecture allows visitors to isolate single threads within the massive archive. Through the interactive search portal, entering a service member's name generates a personalized record. On site, staff can queue specific entries to appear directly on the glowing LED panels, while remote users can search the portal from anywhere.
Seeing generational service rendered in dynamic light creates a tangible connection between national archives and personal legacy. Running queries across my own family line brought up three generations within the digital canvas: my great-grandfather, grandfather, and uncle.
For anyone interested in searching their own family lineage within the memorial, the database remains fully accessible online at USAA.com/Monument250 through August 23. Whether exploring the plaza in person or searching the digital portal from home, the installation serves as a proof of concept. This temporary monument is an incredible example of how we can honor our past, without ruining our forest.
Such a monument could be used at parks and museums all over the country, providing inside looks at wildlife preserves through camera feeds.
When my mother found out about our family on the monument, she started crying. She’s always been very proud of soldiers in our family. This article is dedicated to her.
I’ll keep the rest of this short. When building a new setting, things that should be common are often just glazed over. If your (fictional) society has any real history, it’s had wars. I personally feel like war stories are so overused that there’s very little anything original. MoonShadow had wars. They know what’s up. If you’re like me, and don’t like the idea of writing about war in your world, a monument is definitely the way to go. A few years ago, video game developer, Bethesda, known for their extremely thorough worldbuilding release Starfield. A Sci-Fi game that has you visit a war memorial very early in the story. Science Fiction requires some aspect of worldbuilding.
Seeing this monument’s embrace of modern technology gives me hope. In a society that has both science and idiots who think “anti-science” is a possible belief when they use their computer or smartphone. I’ll give the anti-science platform a chance when it stops using science and things made possible because of it.
Thanks for stopping by,
I’m Jack Lhasa
You are amazing
👊🏼👊🏼Solidarity👊🏼👊🏼
