Maya Ying Lin (b.1959) is an American architect, artist, and designer known for her innovative and socially engaged works. She gained national recognition in 1981 as a Yale undergraduate when she won the competition to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Her minimalist design, featuring two black granite walls inscribed with the names of fallen soldiers, redefined public memorials.
Born in Athens, Ohio, to Chinese immigrant parents, Lin studied architecture at Yale, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1981 and a master’s in 1986. She continued to create impactful public works, including the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama (1989,) and the Women’s Table at Yale University (1993.) Many of her projects incorporate environmental themes, such as Wave Field (1995) and What Is Missing? (2009,) an interactive project focused on biodiversity and climate change.
Lin has authored Boundaries (2000,) which explores her artistic vision, and Maya Lin: Topologies (2015,) a comprehensive retrospective of her work.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Maya Lin
To fly, we have to have resistance.
—Maya Lin
Topics: Opposition, Difficulty
My parents are both college professors, and it made me want to question authority, standards and traditions.
—Maya Lin
Topics: Authority
Architecture is like a mythical fantastic. It has to be experienced. It can’t be described. We can draw it up and we can make models of it, but it can only be experienced as a complete whole.
—Maya Lin
Topics: Architecture
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