New York New Visions is a pro-bono coalition of architecture, engineering, planning and design organizations committed to honoring the victims of the September 11 tragedy by rebuilding a vital New York. In the last weeks of 2001 we put forth a document, Principles for the Rebuilding of Lower Manhattan, proposed as a starting point to stimulate constructive dialogue and help build consensus. It made several points that eighteen months later still inform the memorial process and hopefully can resonate with those present who have been honored with the title of competition juror.

I would like to read a few portions of this text before moving on to the issues at hand today. “The World Trade Center site and its adjacent areas have been witness to extraordinary tragedy and heroism . . . The original configuration and occupants of the site should be reflected in the memorial. The successful rebuilding of Lower Manhattan, if carried out with sufficient high purpose, would also be a memorial in itself . . . The memorials should offer a profound experience and significant site for remembrance. A permanent memorial should be integrated into the planning and design of the entire site. The memorials should be conceived in the context of a vital community. There is a desire for a beautiful, calming, neutral place of sacred ground that would memorialize heroism, resilience, and sacrifice and reference the downtown communities’ loss in the broadest sense. Artifacts of the tragedy, such as fragments of the World Trade Center buildings, could be retained at the site. Not just ‘another granite fountain’, a vision of the memorial was of an experience that could be social and fluid, a place for stories.”

With the selection of the site plan by Studio Daniel Libeskind, a strong setting for an inspirational memorial has been proposed. Evaluating how memorial competition entrants address and engage the poetically compelling aspects of the memorial precinct created in the Libeskind plan will be among the more difficult aspects of the jury’s task.

At this point New York New Visions suggests five simple words, a matrix of important considerations in the upcoming qualitative assessment:
Engagement, Connectivity, Arrival, Spirit and Unity.

ENGAGEMENT: clear engagement with the walls, ramps and other major features of the Libeskind plan is needed. The memorial design must be strong, an equal partner to the dramatic site defined by Studio Daniel Libeskind. The memorial must clearly engage with its surrounding architecture, either in reinforcement or in dramatic tension.

CONNECTIVITY: through the memorial’s arrival sequence, a sense of procession, dignity and hierarchy of space should be reinforced; lines of sight should strengthen the connectivity of the memorial with the remainder of the site and into Lower Manhattan.

ARRIVAL: the memorial proposal evaluation should not be unmindful of how visitors arrive at the World Trade Center site; the issue of the size, location and purpose of a tourist bus garage is not merely about transportation planning, but relates to the spirit and appropriateness of underground uses and infrastructural space. The jury should be aware of and demanding about the technical studies relating to exigencies of transportation infrastructure.

SPIRIT: the memorial must be beautiful, powerfully evocative, and be able to stand the tests of time, tests that cannot be prepared for or anticipated but which relate to the presumption of evolving historical awareness as the immediacy of the events of 9/11 recede and unborn generations visit the site.

UNITY: the importance of a single non-hierarchic memorial to all those who lost their lives on 9/11/01 and 2/26/93 must be continuously stressed. E pluribus unum is written on the back of the dollar bills that school children, farmers and factory workers will be presumably soon sending to a memorial foundation. Out of many, one. Out of the many lives lost, one clear and singular lodestone of remembrance.

As planners, architects and design professionals, New York New Visions strongly urges that there be a clear framework for public input about the final design prior to the final selection by the memorial jury. This is not conceived as a referendum, but rather, a method for channeling comments from the general community to inform the jury’s deliberations. New York New Visions would be pleased to assist in developing a workable methodology for such comment.

In conclusion I would like to read a stanza from a poem Cuando me escribas, by the Chilean poet, Marjorie Agosin:

When you write me
about cities
on ingenuous postcards
gotten in wounded
shops
don’t tell me
about walls
or churches;
send me
a bell,
the furtive sounds
of a fountain,
sketch me
a piece of the sky
or the origin of a dream
coming to light.

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