The 10th Anniversary of 9/11

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial

We all unite as Americans in having universal unforgettable moments (be they generational) that are so nationally riveting that each of us shares that exact moment in common. To name a few, for those who are old enough to remember, there was the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and most recently, 9/11. Every American living that day will eternally remember where they were the exact moment they heard, saw, or were captured in the midst of the 9/11 tragedy. It globally altered lives, nationally tore families apart and caused us to shed tears we will forever remember as if it were yesterday.

This coming Sunday will be the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and the memorial will open at the exact footprint of the Twin Towers. In honor of those lives lost, SevenPonds begins a week of blog posts dedicated to 9/11.

With the unveiling of the 9/11 memorial next weekend, I can’t help but reflect on the controversy over the Vietnam Veterans Memorial 3 decades ago. A blind design competition was held with 1,421 submissions presented to the jury by numbers only. They selected Maya Ying Lin, a 21-year-old Yale architecture student, as the winner. This unique blind process forever changed our concept of a memorial. The radical nature of her selected design, however, consisting of a mere wall, was so publicly contentious that 2 years following the completion of her design, a gratuitous traditional statue of “The Three Soldiers” was also added. Today, Maya Lin’s design is the most visited memorial in this country.

The Three Soldiers

The 9/11 memorial has had its own controversy. In 2003, the architect Daniel Libeskind won the competition for the World Trade Center master plan, consisting of the Twin Tower memorial, ground-level retail space and 10 million square feet of office space, plus a regrinding of the streets of the original superblock. Daniel Libeskind’s original design has been slowly watered down by the politics of developers, agencies, and other architects involved, but still remains a unique design scheme in its own right. The Freedom Tower (1 WTC), a tall singular tower and his master plan jewel, was designed to be the pivotal symbol to help heal our nation. Sadly, the committee-run process, a new architect David Childs, as well as issues with the novel glass design originally conceived has altered it considerably. Some would safely say Libeskind has lost his battle to maintain his vision. He has quoted Adolf Loos “in life we have buildings but in death we have architecture.”

The Freedom Tower Recent Design

The memorial, located within the former World Trade Center tower footprints, has been appropriately named “Reflecting Absence.” It will open next weekend to a celebration to memorialize the events of 9/11. The design was selected from an international competition of 5,200 entries from 63 nations, and was ultimately designed by Michael Arad and Peter Walker. Within the footprints of the north and south towers are sunken pools with waterfalls plunging 30 feet around the edges and a hole in the center of each reaching another 30 feet. The names of the victims who lost their lives are randomly inscribed into the bronze parapets around the borders. The fountains are surrounded by a paved plaza with 415 identically sized trees beneath which a museum is housed. It is still overwhelming and unimaginable to read the list of options when searching for a parapet name location on the website:

World Trade Center North, Flight 11, World Trade Center South, First Responders, Flight 175, Pentagon, Flight 77, Flight 93.

So many lives were claimed, creating an endless depth of grief. We hope you will join us this week as we remember.

View an animation of the master plan with 9/11 fountains here.