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| REFLECTING
ABSENCE Sunken, square pools in an arbor would
outline the twin tower footprints. (Photo courtesy of
LMDC) |
The 4.5-acre, multilevel
World Trade Center Site Memorial will cost approximately $350
million, including $175 million for infrastructure, say New
York state officials. Though groundbreaking for the project
is set for Sept. 11, officials have not yet released a schedule
or finish date.
On Jan. 14, the Lower Manhattan
Development Corp., with New York Gov. George E. Pataki (R)
and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (R), unveiled the revised design
of Reflecting Absence, the memorial competition winner announced
Jan. 6 (ENR 1/12 p. 7). But even the revision, based on input
from WTC master planner Daniel Libeskind, will continue to
evolve, said Vartan Gregorian, spokesman for the competition’s
13-member, unpaid jury.
"We do not view our selection
of a winner as the end of the memorial," said Gregorian.
"Rather, we see our selection as one more stage of memory."
The jury picked Reflecting Absence
from an initial 5,201 submissions from 63 nations. "Of
all the designs submitted we have found that Reflecting Absence...fulfills
most eloquently the daunting–but absolutely necessary–demands
of this memorial," he said. "In its powerful yet
simple articulation of the footprints of the twin towers,
Reflecting Absence has made the voids left by the destruction
the primary symbols of our loss."
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| Duo
Plus. Walker (left), Arad at unveiling with Pataki (right).
(Photo by Nadine M. Post for ENR) |
The concept is by Michael Arad,
a 36-year-old architect with the New York City Housing Authority,
working with landscape architect Peter Walker, of the 20-year-old
Berkeley, Calif., firm that bears his name.
The design calls for a grove of
deciduous trees, at grade, "interrupted" by two
voids containing pools, recessed 30 ft and outlined by waterfalls.
The 200-ft-square pools and ramps around them would encompass
the footprints of the twin, 110-story towers of the 16-acre
World Trade Center, destroyed by terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001.
The memorial will also honor those who died in a terrorist
bombing of the WTC on Feb. 26, 1993.
The pools would be linked by a
passageway with rooms for contemplation. Surrounding each
pool would be a continuous ribbon of names, etched in stone
in no particular order, of those killed. Rescuers would be
differentiated only by their agency’s insignia. The lack
of alphabetization will promote the democratic ideal that
all lives are equally valuable, said Bloomberg.
Along the site’s western edge,
a stairway would provide access to a section of the slurry
wall foundation and the entrance to an "interpretive
center" for artifacts. A room for unidentified remains
would be at bedrock below the north tower footprint.
More memorial design information
is available at www.WTC. SiteMemorial.org.
John C. Whitehead, chairman of
LMDC, said details about the WTC Site Memorial Foundation,
which will oversee fund raising, construction and programming,
will be offered in the next few weeks.
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