As New York and the rest of the world reflect over events on this day 8 years ago, fresh images have been released showing the designs for the National September 11 Memorial Museum.
The 9/11 Memorial Preview Site, at 20 Vesey Street in Manhattan was opened to the public on 24 August where renderings and models of the museum are on display. The museum designed by Davis Brody Bond Aedas is situated within the 8 acre landscaped Memorial Plaza, bracketing the memorial pools set in the footprints of the pre-existing twin towers. The new images show the interior of the three-leveled museum where visitors will be able to witness remaining elements of the twin towers.
VISITORS TO THE MUSEUM will enter through a Pavilion that will house an auditorium for public programming, a multi-purpose area for contemplation and refreshment and a private suite reserved for victims’ family members. Two of the original steel tridents from the Twin Towers will be enclosed within the Pavilion’s grand glass atrium, standing as references to the past, while signaling hope for the future.
From the Pavilion, visitors will descend along a graduated ramp toward the core exhibitions at bedrock, the archaeological heart of the World Trade Center site. On display will be in situ features, including what remains of the structural columns that outline the space where the Twin Towers stood and a section of the original slurry wall that held back the Hudson River on 9/11 – a symbol of strength and resilience.
On the final leg of the journey to bedrock, visitors will descend alongside the ‘Survivors’ Stairs,’ the last standing vestige of the original World Trade Center complex near Vesey Street, which provided an escape route for many on 9/11. In the context of the post-9/11 world, the Stairs will remind visitors that, in some sense, everyone is a survivor of September 11.
THE MEMORIAL design, created by architect Michael Arad and landscape architect Peter Walker, was selected from a design competition that included more than 5,200 entrants from 63 nations.
Excerpts from design statement by Michael Arad and Peter Walker:
‘This memorial proposes a space that resonates with the feelings of loss and absence that were generated by the destruction of the World Trade Center and the taking of thousands of lives on September 11, 2001 and February 26, 1993. It is located in a field of trees that is interrupted by two large voids containing recessed pools. The pools are set within the footprints of the Twin Towers. A cascade of water that describes the perimeter of each square feeds the pools with a continuous stream. They are large voids, open and visible reminders of the absence.’
Memorial designer Michael Arad explains that the design concept ’allows us to place the names of those who died that day next to each other in a meaningful way, marking the names of family and friends together, as they had lived and died.’
The names of the nearly 3,000 individuals who were killed in the September 11 attacks in New York City, Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon, and the February 1993 World Trade Center bombing will be inscribed around the edges of the Memorial pools.
An eight-acre landscaped Memorial Plaza filled with nearly 400 trees will create a contemplative space separate from the sights and sounds of the surrounding city.
Then
Now
Future
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