She also draws inspirations from "culturally diverse sources, including Japanese gardens, Hopewell Indian earthen mounds, and works by American earthworks artists of the 1960s and the 1970s".

[4] Her father, Henry Huan Lin, born in Fuzhou, Fujian, was a ceramist and dean of the Ohio University College of Fine Arts.

[9] She graduated in 1977 from Athens High School in The Plains, Ohio, after which she attended Yale University where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1981 and a Master of Architecture in 1986.

[11] She attributes her interest in the environment to her upbringing in rural Ohio: the nearby Hopewell and Adena Native America burial mounds inspired her from an early age.

All of my work is about slipping things in, inserting an order or a structuring, yet making an interface so that in the end, rather than a hierarchy, there is a balance and tension between the man-made and the natural."

[13] Lin's focus on this relationship highlights the impact humanity has on the environment, and draws attention to issues such as global warming, endangered bodies of water, and animal extinction/endangerment.

Her design, one of 1,422 submissions,[15] specified a black granite wall with the names of 57,939 fallen soldiers carved into its face (hundreds more have been added since the dedication),[16][17] to be v-shaped, with one side pointing toward the Lincoln Memorial and the other toward the Washington Monument.

"I imagined taking a knife and cutting into the earth, opening it up, and with the passage of time, that initial violence and pain would heal," she recalled.

[8][21][22] Some objected to the exclusion of the surviving veterans' names, while others complained about the dark complexion of the granite, claiming that it expressed a negative attitude towards the Vietnam War.

[12] There is a collection with items left since 2001 from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, which includes handwritten letters and notes of those who lost loved ones during these wars.

Her assertion is supported by the fact that she was harassed after her ethnicity was revealed, as when prominent businessman and later third-party presidential candidate Ross Perot called her an "egg roll.

In doing so, Lin focuses on memorializing concepts of time periods instead of direct representations of figures, creating an abstract sculptures and installations.

She believes that gathering ideas and information is especially vital in architecture, which focuses on humanity and life and requires a well-rounded mind.

[57] After she completely understands the definition of the site, Lin finalizes her designs by creating numerous renditions of her project in model form.

A trend toward minimalism and abstraction was noted among the entrants and the finalists as well as in the chosen design for the World Trade Center Memorial.

In 2005, Lin was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York.