Reflecting Absence, Loss, and Those Gone Too Soon — Twenty Years Later
Two decades have passed since the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers. Yet, the memory of those who perished lives on — permanently etched in black granite and in the nation’s collective consciousness.
by Mehr Singh
Michael Arad was all of 34 when he saw the second plane hit the south tower from the roof of his East Village building. At that moment, he didn’t quite grasp what was transpiring; or that he, a then-amateur architect, would be selected to memorialize the catastrophe that unraveled before him.
Five thousand two hundred one memorial designs were submitted from renowned designed firms, amateur architects like Arad, and everywhere in between. His was the only design that defied the guidelines enforced by Daniel Libeskind, the chief architect overlooking the project. Arad knew from the start that his design would be at street level — a public space to contemplate what was lost.
The National September 11 Memorial (formerly the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, and later the Ground Zero Memorial) is ostensibly a concrete oasis in the middle of lower Manhattan: a myriad of skyscrapers boasting coveted addresses such as ‘4 World Trade Centre’ encircle the memorial and museum. The memorial is comprised of two rectangular, reflective pools that stand adjacent to one another, situated at the former sites of the Twin Towers. The two one-acre pools are the largest man-made waterfalls ever created, and the memorial site is specked with 243 swamp white oak trees. The sharp, rigid lines of the pools bear a stark contrast to the soft, sprawling silhouettes of the trees.
While there are over a thousand 9/11 memorials all over the world, Arad’s is arguably the most illustrious. It’s also the largest in terms of size as well as budget.
When you exit the subway station for World Trade Centre on Cortlandt Street, it may appear as though the financial district is conducting business as usual. As you approach 180 Greenwich Street, however, you inexplicably feel uneasy. Your heart sinks. You are, after all, standing on the very site of the worst terrorist strike on American soil — the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers that claimed the lives of 2,606 people.
In an interview with USA Today, Arad stated that New York is one of those cities where you feel like you can skate on top of it all and hold everything at arm’s length. But after the towers fell, that disappeared. He’d never seen New York more united. “If the terrorists thought they’d sow fear and division,” he told the publication, “they did not succeed.”
The planning of the memorial began almost immediately in the aftermath of the attacks. In November of 2001, then-Governor George Pataki and then-Mayor Rudy Guliani formed the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC to plan for the reconstruction of lower Manhattan with nearly $10 billion in redistributed funds. But on March 5, 2002, the LMDC as well as then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg, announced plans to build a memorial to honor the victims of the September 11 attacks. In April 2002, the LMDC initiated an international competition seeking a design for a commemorative memorial.
On January 4, 2004, Michael Arad, an Israeli-American architect from Handel Architects, won the competition, working closely with the landscape architecture firm, Peter Walker and Partners. Though Mayor Bloomberg set a budget of $500 million, the project cost slightly above $1 billion to complete.
Named Reflecting Absence, the site’s twin waterfall pools stand 30 feet below street level, bearing the footprints of the Twin Towers underneath. The minimalistic, evergreen design was as ahead of its time as it was tasteful. The use of black granite in the memorial’s construction symbolized both permanence and death. The victims’ names were inscribed in bronze on the edges of each pool with “meaningful adjacencies” — that positioned them based on familial, friendly, romantic, or professional proximity. The sounds of the waterfalls muffle the sounds of the bustling city and inspire quiet reflection.
A few days before the commemoration of the tragedy’s twentieth anniversary, an influx of police officers and armed guards swarm the site. Chris John, a patrol officer who has worked here for over two years mentions that “lots of people still come weekly and pray. They leave roses for birthdays, anniversaries. Lots of people still haven’t moved on.” The Memorial has been closed to the public at night since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 and was only open at night of September 11 this year for the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
On the night of September 16, 2021, a woman walks her mini poodle outside the closed-off north pool. Her name is Ahilya Wallia, and she works in the tech industry. She notes, “For me personally, 9/11 is about a feeling of loss for the people who died, the war that ensued, and my first introduction to feeling the unique terror that’s caused by violence. I was in 1st grade when 9/11 happened. Seeing the memorial reminds me of the heroic firefighters, police officers, and civilians who made it their mission to selflessly get others out of the building. Remembering this event is a unique mix of feeling sad for what happened, and feeling in awe of people who sacrificed themselves for others.”
She continues, “remembering 9/11 is about so much more than what you can see — a memorial, a new building. Rather, it’s about the people you can’t see who are not with us — who we remember.”
Buildings that once towered over cities are replaced by memorials that go up, but Arad’s street-level design allows visitors to fully contemplate what was lost. He tells USA Today, “You have to make that absence tangible, physical, something that, when you walk up to the edge of that void, you feel it. It’s not just in your head; it’s in your heart.”
