Women’s Role in Military to Be Reflected in Glass-Bedecked Monument : Architecture: Prisms 39 feet high to are to be the centerpiece of a memorial. The designer wanted to “shed light” on unrecognized work.

Marion Gail Weiss held up her slender hands, palms facing inward, in front of her to make the point. “I had this image,” the architect says, “of women’s hands, all those women’s hands and the unrecognized work those women did.”

Soon that image will be transformed into a centerpiece--of 10 triangular prisms of glass--in a monument to the women of the United States who have served in the military.

Weiss, a 31-year-old assistant professor of architecture at the University of Maryland for the last year, and Michael Manfredi, 36, an architect in New York City, were announced recently as the winners of the competition to design the memorial, which was authorized by Congress in 1986. It will cost $25 million--to be raised by private funds--and is scheduled to be completed by 1992. The site, which is at the Memorial Gate Area at Arlington National Cemetery--where millions of Americans pay their respects to the country’s war dead--is directly across from the Lincoln Memorial.

“The challenge was the sensitivity of the site and the sensitivity of the subject--the role of women in the military. For too long, they have been unseen,” Weiss said.

“This sheds light on their unrecognized achievements,” added Manfredi, her design partner. “We didn’t want this to be garish or upstage any of the other sites. We wanted this to be part of the family of monuments.”

Wilma L. Vaught, the retired Air Force brigadier general who is president of the nonprofit Women in Military Service for America Memorial Foundation that oversaw the selection process, praised the design, which will feature 39-foot prisms and incorporate the main features--the wrought iron gates, the curved wall known as the “Hemicycle” and wide plaza--already on the site.

“It’s a beautiful monument and representation of women’s contribution to the military,” she said. “It is also very uplifting.” The announcement of the winning design had been made to coincide with Veteran’s Day, she said, and to celebrate the commemoration of National Women’s Veterans Recognition Week.

Weiss explained the symbolism of the design, selected from among 137 entries in the competition. In addition to the 10 prisms--”hands by day, illuminated candles by night”--there will be four staircases leading from the ground level to a terrace. “They symbolize the slow passage for women, their struggle and ascent in the military,” Weiss said.

In her chosen field of architecture, Weiss said she wished there were fewer barriers for women as well. “I wish I could say it was easier,” she admitted, “but it is difficult for women to get ahead. But I’m optimistic that there are more and more role models for women.”

This professional pairing began in 1984 when Weiss--a 1983 graduate of the Yale School of Architecture--joined the New York architectural firm of Mitchell Giurgola. There she met Manfredi, who had graduated from Cornell with a master’s degree in architecture in 1979. The two joined forces for such clients as IBM and Volvo. They also became friends, the kind of friends who are apt to finish each other’s sentences. They even look somewhat alike: they are slight, dark-haired and partial to black clothing.

When they chose to branch out on their own two years ago, they decided to open offices in New York and Washington, where Manfredi, a graduate of Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, had family.

So far, their combined work has been included in an exhibit organized by the Architectural League of New York called “Vacant Lots” for their design for low-income housing in Manhattan. Weiss, who divides her time between Washington and New York City, is also at work on an apartment project on upper Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

Yet nothing prepared them for this professional breakthrough. “We’re really still starting out,” she said. “This is an amazing feeling for us. We’re very thrilled to have won. It is an amazing opportunity for us.”

Although they were paid $10,000 as one of four finalists in June to go into the second phase--completion of a scaled-down model--and will be paid $10,000 for their continued work on the project, not large sums by architectural project standards, they agreed it was not a labor for money.

Weiss, who grew up near San Francisco, recalled that her father had served in the Navy in the late 1940s. And Manfredi’s mother, Dorothy, served as a U.S. Army nurse for 11 years, beginning in the Pacific during World War II. It was Dorothy Manfredi who first showed her son the clipping about the competition and urged the duo to enter.

When the monument opens, women will be able to place their hands at the base of the prisms where women’s memories of their military experiences will be inscribed. They will be able to stand inside the monument and walk the curved time line, which will explain women’s role in the military since the Revolutionary War. They will also be able to enter the heart of the monument and use computers to read the register of names of women who have served their country. (For $25, any woman who has served in the military can register to be included in the computer files; it is part of the ongoing effort to raise money to complete the memorial.)

“I’m really excited about the idea of people coming to this memorial,” Weiss said. “Women who’ve served in the military will bring their grandchildren and tell their stories and later their children will come telling the stories. The thing that’s unique is that it doesn’t commemorate dead people, but it commemorates all those who served. It’s also a living memorial and will be there to tell a story and to inspire all those women who will serve in the future.”