James E. Young & Michael Van Valkenburgh: Last Chance for Ground Zero
IMAGINE our country today without the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, without the open and painstaking competition that gave veterans, their families and the rest of us a place unlike any other to mourn our losses of that era. As difficult and adversarial as that process was at times, it was necessary. Our need for a memorial at ground zero is no less profound, as is our need to stick by the plan for the World Trade Center Memorial devised more than two years ago, no matter how difficult that may be.
The memorial at ground zero is not a zero-sum project in which one interested party gets its way. It is, rather, an accretion of personal and civic memorial needs, a place for memory, mourning and the history of that horrible day. As 2 of the 13 jurors who eventually chose Michael Arad and Peter Walker's World Trade Center Memorial design, "Reflecting Absence," out of 5,201 submissions from 63 countries, we can no longer sit by while a meticulously organized process for the memorial threatens to come off its tracks.
The memorial project is sagging beneath the weight of competing constituencies, conflicting agendas and unfortunate political exploitation of the memory of 9/11. And while it's true that all memorials evolve according to economic and political needs of the moment, the trade center memorial has not evolved so much as it has been piled on with additional features, pushed by well-meaning interests, which now threaten to sink it beneath a budget of nearly $1 billion.
The key to moving ahead will be making a simple but crucial distinction between the stages of memory at ground zero — focusing first on building the memorial as designed by Mr. Arad and Mr. Walker, and next on the memorial museum and other needs.
The memorial design is composed of two square, one-acre reflecting pools marking the footprints of the twin towers, each with a square void at its center. Reaching the base of these lower pools by ramps, visitors will find the names of victims inscribed on walls at the water's edge.
This is not an underground memorial, as its detractors claim — an echo of the criticism once directed at Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Rather, it is stitched into the fabric of the city and streets around it, allowing visitors to peer into the depths of destruction from street level. ...
Read entire article at NYT
The memorial at ground zero is not a zero-sum project in which one interested party gets its way. It is, rather, an accretion of personal and civic memorial needs, a place for memory, mourning and the history of that horrible day. As 2 of the 13 jurors who eventually chose Michael Arad and Peter Walker's World Trade Center Memorial design, "Reflecting Absence," out of 5,201 submissions from 63 countries, we can no longer sit by while a meticulously organized process for the memorial threatens to come off its tracks.
The memorial project is sagging beneath the weight of competing constituencies, conflicting agendas and unfortunate political exploitation of the memory of 9/11. And while it's true that all memorials evolve according to economic and political needs of the moment, the trade center memorial has not evolved so much as it has been piled on with additional features, pushed by well-meaning interests, which now threaten to sink it beneath a budget of nearly $1 billion.
The key to moving ahead will be making a simple but crucial distinction between the stages of memory at ground zero — focusing first on building the memorial as designed by Mr. Arad and Mr. Walker, and next on the memorial museum and other needs.
The memorial design is composed of two square, one-acre reflecting pools marking the footprints of the twin towers, each with a square void at its center. Reaching the base of these lower pools by ramps, visitors will find the names of victims inscribed on walls at the water's edge.
This is not an underground memorial, as its detractors claim — an echo of the criticism once directed at Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Rather, it is stitched into the fabric of the city and streets around it, allowing visitors to peer into the depths of destruction from street level. ...