A design consisting of two reflecting pools and a paved stone field has been chosen for the World Trade Center memorial after an eight-month international competition that drew more than 5,000 entries, The Associated Press has learned.
The "Reflecting Absence" memorial, created by city designer Michael Arad, was chosen by a 13-member jury of artists, architects and civic and cultural leaders after months of intense deliberation.
The decision was to be announced later Tuesday by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the agency overseeing the rebuilding of the site, a source familiar with the process told the AP. The final plan, which has undergone significant revision since first submitted, will be unveiled next week.
A jubilant Arad said he was surrounded by well-wishers after learning his plan was chosen. "I just have so many people in the room right now," he said by telephone.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg noted the scope of the project; the number of submissions was considered unprecedented for a contest of this kind.
"The most important thing is we come up with the right memorial and this process had thousands of people who had suggestions," Bloomberg said. "They whittled it down from thousands to one. You're not going to please everybody."


http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040106/D7VTJ08O1.html

Design Selected for a Memorial at Ground Zero
By GLENN COLLINS

Published: January 7, 2004

Yesterday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg praised the jurors for "working tirelessly," adding that "I agree with their selection." Gov. George E. Pataki said he looked forward to the formal unveiling of the design.
Critics savaged what they saw as the designs' impracticability, their sameness and their generic lack of connection to the specifics of the attack and the city of New York.
But Mayor Bloomberg defended the deliberations. "You're not going to please everybody, I am sure," he said yesterday. "But we put together a process. We said, `Let this committee of distinguished people from a variety of backgrounds and interests go work together and pick something.' "
The jurors deliberated for nearly 12 hours on Monday at Gracie Mansion, after the three semifinalist teams made their last presentations to the jury in person. "It was respectful and collegial," said a person present at the discussions, "and every member made a vital contribution."
People who knew of the deliberations said jurors had questioned the starkness of the original landscaping and suggested that Mr. Arad collaborate with a design architect, but did not suggest one. The plan's original 100-foot-tall white pine trees, they said, have yielded to another configuration.
They also said that the amended memorial would now allow access to the north tower footprints at bedrock, and would expose part of the now-legendary concrete wall surrounding the site.
Those with knowledge of the jury deliberations said that Reflecting Absence was the top choice of Ms. Lin, the juror, but that ultimately it won support from a large number of jury members. She declined comment yesterday.
The greatest single difference between Mr. Arad's vision for the site and that of Daniel Libeskind, the master site planner, was a barrierlike cultural building along West Street that has already been removed from the evolving memorial plan, according to a person with knowledge of the jury's deliberations.
Mr. Libeskind, who first proposed setting the memorial within the 70-foot-deep trade center foundation, said yesterday that the voids in Mr. Arad's design were a "meaningful connection" with his own design intent. He said he anticipated reconciling the final version of Reflecting Absence with his own plan in the next week.
http://nytimes.com/2004/01/07/nyregion/nyregionspecial3/07MEMO.html?pagewanted=2&hp

WTC tribute design chosen
Victims' kin object to Tech graduate's winning concept

By DAVID HO
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A plan for a World Trade Center memorial, created by a Georgia Tech graduate, won a competition Tuesday to be the final design to honor those killed in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Arad, the designer, recently joined the design department of the New York City Housing Authority and has been working on plans for two police stations. He grew up in Israel, Mexico and the United States and once served in the Israeli Defense Force.
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0104/07wtc.html

Unknown Architect Is Teamed With a Veteran
By JAMES BARRON

Published: January 7, 2004

Yesterday, in announcing that Reflecting Absence had beaten two other designs that were informal semifinalists last week, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation said "significant" changes had been made in Mr. Arad's original design.
The corporation also said Mr. Arad was collaborating with the landscape architect Peter Walker. Mr. Arad was virtually unheard of until the finalists were selected, while Mr. Walker has worked with some of the biggest names in architecture, including I. M. Pei, Rem Koolhaas, Norman Foster and Yoshio Taniguchi.
Mr. Walker was a co-founder of the firm that became the SWA Group and opened its West Coast office. He formed his own firm, Peter Walker and Partners, 21 years ago. That firm, in Berkeley, Calif., has worked on the Millennium Park for the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia; the headquarters of Novartis, the Swiss pharmaceutical company; and Disney City in Orlando, Fla.
Howard Marder, a spokesman for the authority, said yesterday that Mr. Arad had helped design two police stations. One, at 2794 Randall Avenue in Throgs Neck, the Bronx, is the headquarters of Police Service Area No. 8, which covers 27 housing developments in the north Bronx. The other, Police Service Area No. 2, at 560 Sutter Avenue in Brooklyn, is responsible for 37 housing developments in Brooklyn.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/07/nyregion/nyregionspecial3/07WINN.html?ex=1074142800&en=f74cf85a67d9abc6&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

Ground Zero Jury Adheres to a Maxim: Less Is More
By DAVID W. DUNLAP

Published: January 7, 2004

In the end, the jury seemed to see the same thing so many people have seen at the World Trade Center site since Sept. 11, 2001: what is not there.

Faced with many possible additions to the site, jurors in the memorial competition chose subtraction instead. As conceived by Michael Arad, Reflecting Absence would evoke the outlines of the twin towers as pool-filled voids in the earth, 30 feet deep and almost an acre each in extent. Perhaps more than any finalist, this design expresses loss in stark, unambiguous visual terms.

It recalls the voids proposed on the tower footprints by Foster & Partners of London, among the original entrants in the design study for the site. It also brings to mind the voids of the "North, East, South, West" installation by Michael Heizer at the Dia:Beacon museum in Beacon, N.Y.

Deep openings in a plaza, even one teeming with trees, will not be to everyone's liking; not neighbors who hoped for a friendlier park, not survivors who hoped for more tender consolation.

"The most frequent criticisms were that the design is too cold, bleak and angular," said Kent L. Barwick, president of the Municipal Art Society, which conducted its own survey. "Responding to the question of how future generations would view the memorial, some felt that the meaning of 9/11 would be clearly understood because of the design's use of the void and emptiness."

In that sense, it resonates with Daniel Libeskind's overall site concept, which identified the void — the foundation of the towers — as the container for memory.

"It's simple and bold," Mr. Libeskind said yesterday about Reflecting Absence, after meeting Mr. Arad, who is now allied with the landscape architect Peter Walker. "People on the jury saw it as a very bold interpretation of the void."
Mr. Arad's original design departed significantly from Mr. Libeskind's plan by proposing a long, slender cultural building on West Street. Mr. Arad said in November that the structure would shelter the memorial from the adjacent West Street-Route 9A.

But the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation noted that neither the building's width nor its volume would be suitable for a museum. And Mr. Libeskind objected to the way it would break the visual connection between the trade center site and the Hudson River. Community leaders, too, regarded it as a barrier.

The West Street building has since been eliminated from the plan, said someone with knowledge of the jurors' deliberations.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/07/nyregion/nyregionspecial3/07POOL.html?ex=1074142800&en=34febdad224dc858&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

9/11 Memorial Design Selected
Victims' Families, Others Criticize Reflecting Pool Plan as Unfitting
By Michael Powell
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 7, 2004; Page C01

Of late, congressional representatives Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) have spoken of trying to designate the footprints as a national historic site. Their argument, much applauded by victims' families, is that this is a battleground no less fundamental than Antietam or Gettysburg.
Family members desire a memorial that incorporates the iconic elements of the fallen towers: the twisted metal beams that resembled a crucifix and the jagged skin of the north tower, which for weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, seemed to rise from the center of the smoking pit of rubble.
Anthony Gardner, who is president of the Coalition of 9/11 Families, attended a meeting Tuesday at the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., then learned only afterward that a memorial design had been chosen. He has asked for a halt to the plans while the families and public examine the site.
"There seems something almost haphazard about this process," he says. "Future generations will hold Gov. George Pataki responsible -- we can't sacrifice our heritage just to get something built quickly."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60568-2004Jan6_2.html

Israeli's Plan Chosen For World Trade Center Site
16:27 Jan 07, '04 / 13 Tevet 5764



The winning plan for the memorial to be built at the site of the felled World Trade Center towers was co-designed by Israeli-born Michael Arad. Over 5,200 proposals from more than 60 countries - and from every state in the U.S. except Alaska - were received last year, and in November, eight finalists were chosen. A special team of 13 jurors deliberated this week for nearly 12 hours, and announced yesterday that it had chosen the plan entitled "Reflecting Absence."

Architect Michael Arad, 34, works for New York City's Housing Authority. He is the son of former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Moshe Arad.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=55813