[“Ways to remember,” an article on the WTC memorial finalists in the Dec. 17-23, 2003 issue, included a discussion of Michael Arad’s “Reflecting Absence,” which was named as the winning design on Jan. 6, 2004.]
Some were enthusiastic, extolling the merits of their favorites. Others said they wanted more time to think about the eight finalists, which were selected from 5,201 entries.
The Coalition of 9/11 Families though, thanked the short-listed architects for the thought they put into their projects, praised the breadth of talent shown — and then gave all them an F on their ‘report card.’
Its reasons had nothing to do with aesthetics. Rather, the designers were failed because they excluded the bedrock footprints at 70 feet beneath ground level. The coalition argues that future generations should be allowed to journey down to see the box-beam columns, an ‘authentic historical document’ of where the Towers stood.
“The footprints are very important to the families,” said Jack Lynch, whose son died in the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Michael Lynch was a Bronx-based firefighter working on rotation from the firehouse at 66th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. Lynch senior, a Kerry native, teamed up with seven other fathers of firefighters in the long recovery operation after the attack. On March 21, 2002, remains that were identified as those of Michael Lynch were found. Only one other of the men got physical confirmation of his son’s death.
The coalition says that the site has taken on tremendous significance because half of all families who lost loved ones did not get identified remains.
The problem is not with the designers, it argues, but the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC), which restricted designers’ plans from going below 30 feet.
“The process has been flawed from the beginning,” Lynch said, adding that there’s been little real input allowed from families and the general public.
He described the LMDC as a “puppet,” controlled by the Port Authority and Silverstein Properties, the long-term leaseholders of the site.
“They’ve been very astute in how they managed this process,” Lynch said
“We’re losing our sensitivity about human life and what it means,” he added. “We’re putting greed ahead of honoring our dead.”
Lynch points to the example of Hiroshima, where the one building that remained after the atomic bomb destroyed the city formed the basis of its memorial. “It’s one of their biggest cities, real estate is at a premium yet they set aside 30 acres,” he said.
“This is essentially a mass grave,” said the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest who volunteered to minister to workers at Ground Zero in the weeks after the attack. He’s unsure about the coalition’s view that bedrock at 70 feet below must be preserved. Like most members of the public, he understands the ‘footprints’ to be the markings that represent precisely at ground level where the towers stood.
“It’s like a military graveyard, people walk will over it,” Martin said. “The key thing is that nothing is built over it.”
“The whole issue has been pushed through too quickly, it’s been driven by market forces,” Martin said. “It’s pretty shameful.”
Chris Burke, director of Tuesday’s Children and a founder of the Coalition of 9/11 Families, argued that the families have lost the battle.
“My belief is that the decisions have already been made,” he said. “In spirit I’m wholeheartedly with Jack Lynch. If people knew how hard Jack worked and how much blood, sweat and tears the families put into making sure there was a proper site. But the families are being ignored.” He described much of the process as “window-dressing.”
“The families have been fighting City Hall — not Bloomberg, the system,” he said.
Burke’s brother Thomas, an employee of Cantor Fitzgerald, died on Sept. 11, 2001. Among his loved ones left behind were four sons, who are still all under 10. Chris Burke himself worked for Cantor Fitzgerald for a decade though was not an employee on the day of the tragedy.
“I lost all of my friends,” he said. “My focus is on the 3000 living memorials,” he said, referring to the minor children who lost a parent in the 9/11 attacks and with whose future well being Tuesday’s Children is concerned.
He takes what he sees as the pragmatic approach.
“Frankly this is not a field in Virginia,” Burke said. “I understand that there are fiscal realities.”
However the coalition looks to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has argued that office space needs to found elsewhere, and it claims also the backing of Sen. Hillary Clinton.
In statements the coalition has tried to put the real estate issue in context, saying that the World Trade Center was greatly underutilized for much of its 30-year history and that tax subsidies were squandered.
In contrast to all of this, some argue that by requiring the footprints in the memorial — at ground level as popularly understood — developers have greatly hampered the architects. “By doing so, it mandated the use of a scale that is not inherently intimate, or conducive to private contemplation,” said Galway-born architect Brian Connolly.
But he agrees with Martin that there has been a rush to memorialize
“My own feeling is that it is still too early to fully understand the meaning of Sept. 11,” he said. “It is difficult to create a valid artistic response if the meaning and importance of the event is not comprehended in a deeply spiritual way by designer and viewer alike.”
He added: “Of the eight schemes, Michael Arad’s is at least relatively simple. It has the greater possibility for achieving dignity if it is simplified even further.”
A concise summary of the simpler elements of just one design, Arad’s ‘Reflecting Absence,’ hints at how extraordinarily complex and multi-faceted the debate around the eight finalists has become.
In Arad’s design pair of reflective pools marks the location of the towers’ footprints. The surface of these pools is broken by large voids.
They’re submerged 30 feet below street level, fed by a constant stream of water, cascading down the walls which enclose them.
In between the two pools is a short subterranean passageway, at the center of which is small alcove where visitors can light a candle. Across from it, a long corridor leads to a chamber that houses unidentified remains. This space is only open to family members.
Etain Fitzpatrick, an architect who’s worked with Arad in the past, described the concept of the voids as a ‘very powerful’ one.
She added: “In architecture, movement of water symbolizes healing and calming. It’s meant to be meditative.”
New York Times critic Herbert Muschamp wrote that a few of the designs “have the makings of a good beginning” and made special mention of Arad’s submission, saying that it has the single virtue of focusing the viewer’s attention where we want it to be focused.”
Architect Niall O’Leary, a Dublin native, said: “It’s a clever idea; on a small scale it would work. But it’s too big,” he said.
He argued that the designs are static and somber. In the heart of the city, he believes that sparse, desolate, wide-open areas would be too morbid and too morose. “They should be full of life and vitality,” he said, adding this would be a way of showing evil would not triumph.
Despite the complexity of the issues involved, one question has been relatively straightforward: should the memorial be therapeutic or should there be a stark reminder of the carnage that took place?
“Votive lights? What’s that got to do with a terrorist bombing?” Martin said, referring to one design. He said that part of the power of Maya Lin’s Vietnam wall in Washington D.C. is that it reflects people’s ambiguity about that conflict. There should be no ambiguity when it came to 9/11.
Martin saw extraordinary goodness at work at Ground Zero after the attack, but doesn’t believe the memorial should be about the triumph of good over evil. “It shouldn’t be a celebration of anything. It shouldn’t be about American hubris,” he said.
Most of all, though, it shouldn’t disguise the evil. “We anesthetize the visitor, as if we can’t bear too much of the truth,” Martin said.
“There’s none of the horror or the evil of the attack,” Lynch said. “And it was evil that generated this attack.” He said that a museum could deal with the reasons behind 9/11, but that a memorial must concentrate on the day itself.
“The last remaining proportion of the wall, something like that would be a lot more evocative than these banal designs,” Martin said.
Lynch agreed, and said he feared the memorial could end up looking like the Epcot Center in Disneyland.
In another criticism of the developers, he said that the models on view at the Winter Garden are much smaller than the original designers’ plans and it’s harder for the general public to make a judgment.
Burke argued that it shouldn’t be difficult to build a respectful site. He stressed again his pragmatism: “I’m a man who has to deal in realities.”
However, he has an uneasy feeling about the direction of this project. “Visionaries have built this town,” Burke said, but on the basis of what he’s seen so far, some of the people involved, he believes, “won’t be judged too kindly by history.”