With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Quietly, a Sept. 11 memorial begins to take shape

Of all the right angles that have been built at ground zero in the last three years, of all the places where steel meets steel at 90 degrees, there is no more meaningful angle right now than the one that defines a corner of the north pool of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum.

It visibly defines part of the outline of 1 World Trade Center - a void left in the city fabric after the attack of Sept. 11, 2001.

"Sculptors talk about how the sculpture is already in the stone and all they're doing is chipping away at it," said Michael Arad, the architect who won the memorial design competition in 2004, with the landscape architect Peter Walker. "This is the opposite. Our void is already there. It's there in the sky. And we're building around it.

"It's great to see the faintest contours beginning to emerge," he said.

Read entire article at International Herald Tribune