kitty
01-06-2004, 06:28 PM
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/Northeast/01/06/wtc.memorial/index.html
http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2004/US/Northeast/01/06/wtc.memorial/story.pools.jpg
Winning WTC memorial design revealed
NEW YORK (CNN) -- A design that would turn the footprints of the twin towers into reflective pools has been selected for the World Trade Center memorial.
The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation announced Tuesday the choice of "Reflecting Absence" by Israeli-born architect Michael Arad.
A jury of 13 voted on the winning plan Monday at the conclusion of an all-day, final deliberating session at Gracie Mansion, the traditional home of New York City's mayor.
Arad's design dramatically uses water as a signature element, proposing two pools with cascading waterfalls 30-feet below street level, occupying the same acre-wide squares where the 110-story towers stood. Visitors could walk down to the pools.
The water would cascade on attack victims' names engraved on stone walls surrounding the pools in a random manner to convey the "haphazard brutality of the deaths," Arad said in a personal statement that accompanied his being named a finalist six weeks ago.
"This design proposes a space that resonates with the feelings of loss and absence that were generated by the death and destruction at the World Trade Center," Arad said in the statement.
At the street level, Arad proposes a cobblestone plaza with moss and grass and eastern white pine trees "that would bring back that verticality to the site that the towers once had there and bring life to the plaza," Arad said in his video presentation, released in November by the LMDC.
Arad also proposes, in an alternation from the master site plan created by architect Daniel Libeskind, a wall along the western edge of the 16-acre site, where there is an eight-lane road.
"It encloses the site and shelters it from the highway," Arad said in the video.
Like four other finalists, Arad lives in New York City. He has been living in the United States since completing military service in the Israeli army in 1991.
Married with one son, Arad is a graduate of Dartmouth and Georgia Tech's architecture school.
Arad currently works for New York City's housing authority and has most recently worked on the design of two NYPD station houses.
His memorial design provides a location for unidentified human remains recovered from the site after the September 11, 2001, attacks and ways to commemorate more than 200 people killed in the other hijacking crashes at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and six people killed in the 1993 terrorist truck bombing at the Trade Center.
The jury was comprised of professionals in the arts, architecture and academia, along with one Lower Manhattan resident and one September 11 victim's family member.
According to competition rules, the entries were kept anonymous during deliberations of the jury, which did not know the identity of the finalists until after they were chosen.
Each of the eight finalists was granted a six-figure budget to enhance their concepts with models, renderings, engineering studies and animations.
The jurors -- including Vietnam Memorial designer Maya Lin -- volunteered hundreds of hours since they first began screening the 5,201 proposals sent in from all 50 states and 62 countries last summer.
"We've asked the jury so much, and they've given so much more," Kevin Rampe, president of the LMDC said of their efforts. "The jury's very pleased with the results."
The two other finalists were:
• "Passages of Light: The Memorial Cloud," would construct a translucent glass walking surface at street level with circular lights below, shining upward and illuminating the engraved names of victims grouped according to their location during the attacks.
• "Garden of Lights," would offer a three-level memorial turning the plaza into a prairie and orchard enclosed inside a wall open daily only from 8:46 to 10:29 a.m., representing the times of the first plane crash and the falling of the second tower.
***
is it just me or are the other two finalists' designs a little impractical?
http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2004/US/Northeast/01/06/wtc.memorial/story.pools.jpg
Winning WTC memorial design revealed
NEW YORK (CNN) -- A design that would turn the footprints of the twin towers into reflective pools has been selected for the World Trade Center memorial.
The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation announced Tuesday the choice of "Reflecting Absence" by Israeli-born architect Michael Arad.
A jury of 13 voted on the winning plan Monday at the conclusion of an all-day, final deliberating session at Gracie Mansion, the traditional home of New York City's mayor.
Arad's design dramatically uses water as a signature element, proposing two pools with cascading waterfalls 30-feet below street level, occupying the same acre-wide squares where the 110-story towers stood. Visitors could walk down to the pools.
The water would cascade on attack victims' names engraved on stone walls surrounding the pools in a random manner to convey the "haphazard brutality of the deaths," Arad said in a personal statement that accompanied his being named a finalist six weeks ago.
"This design proposes a space that resonates with the feelings of loss and absence that were generated by the death and destruction at the World Trade Center," Arad said in the statement.
At the street level, Arad proposes a cobblestone plaza with moss and grass and eastern white pine trees "that would bring back that verticality to the site that the towers once had there and bring life to the plaza," Arad said in his video presentation, released in November by the LMDC.
Arad also proposes, in an alternation from the master site plan created by architect Daniel Libeskind, a wall along the western edge of the 16-acre site, where there is an eight-lane road.
"It encloses the site and shelters it from the highway," Arad said in the video.
Like four other finalists, Arad lives in New York City. He has been living in the United States since completing military service in the Israeli army in 1991.
Married with one son, Arad is a graduate of Dartmouth and Georgia Tech's architecture school.
Arad currently works for New York City's housing authority and has most recently worked on the design of two NYPD station houses.
His memorial design provides a location for unidentified human remains recovered from the site after the September 11, 2001, attacks and ways to commemorate more than 200 people killed in the other hijacking crashes at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and six people killed in the 1993 terrorist truck bombing at the Trade Center.
The jury was comprised of professionals in the arts, architecture and academia, along with one Lower Manhattan resident and one September 11 victim's family member.
According to competition rules, the entries were kept anonymous during deliberations of the jury, which did not know the identity of the finalists until after they were chosen.
Each of the eight finalists was granted a six-figure budget to enhance their concepts with models, renderings, engineering studies and animations.
The jurors -- including Vietnam Memorial designer Maya Lin -- volunteered hundreds of hours since they first began screening the 5,201 proposals sent in from all 50 states and 62 countries last summer.
"We've asked the jury so much, and they've given so much more," Kevin Rampe, president of the LMDC said of their efforts. "The jury's very pleased with the results."
The two other finalists were:
• "Passages of Light: The Memorial Cloud," would construct a translucent glass walking surface at street level with circular lights below, shining upward and illuminating the engraved names of victims grouped according to their location during the attacks.
• "Garden of Lights," would offer a three-level memorial turning the plaza into a prairie and orchard enclosed inside a wall open daily only from 8:46 to 10:29 a.m., representing the times of the first plane crash and the falling of the second tower.
***
is it just me or are the other two finalists' designs a little impractical?