Overland Park 9/11 Memorial

Throughout our firm’s history, SFS Architecture has worked with many first responders on the design of public safety facilities. We consider many of them to be friends. When news emerged that a local firefighter had secured an artifact from the rubble of the World Trade Center after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, we approached our friends at the Overland Park Fire Department about creating a lasting memorial to this national tragedy in our own community.

Our design integrates four educational panels depicting the journeys of the four planes brought down on 9/11. Each journey follows along the celestial path created as the sun travels through the morning hours of September 11. A beam of light, cast through the standing artifact, travels along the panels. The exact time of each plane’s impact is marked on the path with a medallion.

The haunting images from that day — people covered in building remains with tears on their cheeks — are symbolized by a feature with water flowing over a wall of eroded metal.

The memorial's site is adjacent to the city’s fire training facility, a deliberate reminder to the first responders that pass through the facility of the ultimate sacrifice they may be called upon to make in the line of duty.