Judges unveil 9/11 memorial design

A DESIGN consisting of two reflecting pools and a large grove of trees has been chosen for the World Trade Centre memorial after an eight-month competition that drew more than 5,000 entries from around the world.

The Reflecting Absence memorial, designed by Michael Arad and Peter Walker, was chosen by a 13-member jury of artists, architects and civic and cultural leaders.

The winning memorial was announced by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the agency overseeing the rebuilding of the site.

The reflecting pools will mark the footprints of the World Trade Centre towers.

The development group said a revised version of the memorial will be unveiled next week, with significant changes that add trees and greenery around the footprints and expose the slurry wall, the last surviving piece of the trade centre.

The design previously had a vast open plaza marked by just a few trees, but will now include “teeming groves of trees, traditional affirmations of life and rebirth”, said jury chairman Vartan Gregorian, of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

“The result is a memorial that expresses the incalculable loss of life and its regeneration,” Mr Gregorian said.

The development agency also said it is flexible about the grouping of victims’ names at the memorial, a point bitterly fought by rescue workers who want separate recognition for their colleagues.

But the memorial drew an icy reception from some victims’ families, who accused the jury of ignoring their input during a hasty deliberation and said the design failed to convey the horror of the attack.

Anthony Gardner, who lost his brother in the September 11 attack and is a member of a coalition for family groups, said the design was “unacceptable”.

“This is minimalism, and you can’t minimalise the impact and the enormity of September 11,” Mr Gardner said.

The memorial, considered the outsider of three finalists chosen by the jury in November, will remember all of the victims of the September 11 attack, including those killed at the Pentagon, in Pennsylvania and aboard the hijacked airliners. It also will honour the six people killed in the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing.

The memorial will be one of two focal points at the trade centre site, along with the 1,776-ft glass skyscraper known as the Freedom Tower.