Memorial Winner:
Reflecting Absence
"Reflecting Absence," the design by Michael Arad that features two pools of water with pine trees and a paved stone field, has been chosen to be the memorial on the site of the World Trade Center.

The Eight Memorials
On November 19, 2003, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation unveiled the eight finalist designs in the World Trade Center memorial competition. The designs were selected by a 13-member jury. Each design must recognize the twin tower footprints and each individual killed in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and February 26, 1993. The designs are on display at the Winter Garden and the jury will select the final design.

The eight finalists are:

• Votives in Suspension (by Norman Lee and Michael Lewis)
• Lower Waters (by Bradley Campbell and Matthias Neumann)
• Passages of Light: The Memorial Cloud (by bbc art + architecture)
• Suspending Memory (by Joseph Karadin with Hsin-Yi Wu)
• Garden of Lights (by Pierre David with Sean Corriel, Jessica Kmetovic)
• Reflecting Absence: A Memorial at the World Trade Center Site (by Michael Arad)
• Dual Memory (by Brian Stawn and Karla Sierralta)
• Inversion of Light (Toshio Sasaki)

The jury members are:

• Paula Grant Berry -- A Brooklyn resident whose husband was killed on 9/11.
• Susan Freedman -- President of the Public Art Fund, and a board member a the Museum of Modern Art, the Municipal Arts Society, and others.
• Vartan Gregorian, Ph.D -- President of Carnegie Corporation of New York.
• Patricia Harris -- Mayor Michael Bloomberg's deputy mayor for administration.
• Maya Lin -- Designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC.
• Michael McKeon -- Governor George Pataki's former communications director.
• Julie Menin -- Owner of Vine Restaurant in lower Manhattan, and founder of Wall Street Rising.
• Enrique Norten -- A Mexican architect who won a 2002 design competition for the Brooklyn Library for the Visual and Performing Arts.
• Matrin Puryear -- A scupltor and a former winner of the MacArthur Foundation's genius grant.
• Nancy Rosen -- An expert on public art.
• Lowery Stokes Sims, Ph.D -- Director of Studio Museum in Harlem and former curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• Michael Van Valkenburgh -- New York City landscape architect who also teaches at Harvard Graduate School of Design.
• James Young, Ph.D -- Professor at University of Massachusetts, Amhert's Judaic and Near Eastern Studies department.

Memorial Competition Website
The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation's official website for the memorial competition.

Memorial Mission Statement
Family members of 9/11 victims worked with the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to develop a mission statement about the memorial for September 11. The mission statement was incorporated into guidelines for a memorial competition, which began in April, 2003.

Tributes and Remembrances
Immediately after the morning of September 11, New Yorkers and others around the world began commemorating the September 11 victims. Online, there are a number of sites with information about other projects and organizations devoted to remember 9/11, from memorial quilts to comic books.

Ideas For Memorials Downtown
Not long after the attacks, architects, designers and planners began developing ideas for memorializing the victims of September 11. See some of the ideas that they proposed.

Gotham Gazette Articles

My Memorial
Mike Kuo, the head of Imagine New York, writes about his group's report -- and how working on it affected him personally.

Transcript of Live Chat
Gotham Gazette held an online memorial chat with architectural experts Rick Bell and Fred Bernstein. Read a transcript here.

The Eight Memorial Designs
Most incorporate water, all use light, and together they are evoking strong reaction. A look at details of the designs, the criticism, the process of choosing them, and what is likely to happen now.

The Pentagon Memorial's Lessons for New York
By the time New York City's September 11 memorial jury narrows the Ground Zero memorial competition down to five finalists, the Pentagon will have already broken ground on its memorial - selected way back in March - for the 184 victims who died there on 9/11. What can New York learn from the other 9/11 memorial?

A Resident's Hopes for the Memorial
As the 9/11 memorial jury prepares to sort through design applications, lower Manhattan resident Tim Lannan writes that he wants the chosen memorial to convey the special sense of community he felt downtown after the attacks.

Competing to Design the 9/11 Memorial
Designers competing in the international 9/11 memorial competition were given until June 30 to figure out how to best memorialize September 11 and interpret the competition's guidelines, even as those closest to the tragedy disagreed on the details and concepts for the memorial.

Perspectives on the Memorial
Anthony Gardner, whose brother Harvey Joseph Gardner III was killed on 9/11, argues that a bus garage and commercial stores do not have a place in the sacred space where most of the remains of those murdered on September 11 were found.

Perspectives on the Memorial
In the first in a series of essays about the 9/11 memorial, retired firefighter John Finucane says that whatever design is chosen should list the names of the rescue workers together, with their name, rank, serial number and company.

The Memorial Hearing
At the May 28 hearing about the 9/11 memorial, Chris Ganci, whose father, Fire Department Chief Pete Ganci, died on September 11, urged the jury to chose a design that shows that rescue workers "willingly gave their lives to help other people." Julie Boryczewski said that the design should show what happened on 9/11 "honestly and equally." Read transcripts of their testimonies, and others, from the hearing.

The Memorial Jury
On April 10, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation selected the jury that will select a design for the 9/11 memorial. A look at the 13 jury members, and a timeline for the competition.

Transcript of Live Chat with Anita Contini (08/21/02)
Read a transcript of our live online chat with Anita Contini, director of memorial, cultural and civic programs for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. Find out what she said during our conversation as Contini fielded questions about the process of creating the memorial.

Looking At Memorials (08/19/02)
Anita Contini, who began her job as the person in charge of the memorial at Ground Zero this month, has a trip planned to help her figure out what her next steps should be. Her visits to the Oklahoma City memorial, the Vietnam memorial, a memorial to the victims of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, Japan and others may have important lessons for Ground Zero.

Rebuild The Towers vs. All Memorial (08/05/02)
Preliminary results from Gotham Gazette's Ground Zero Planner show that over half the entries call for rebuilding the towers as they were, while a fifth insist all 16 acres should be a memorial. Also: what the experts make of these passionately-held, mutually exclusive views, and whether a real consensus can be reached.

Monica's Mission (06/29/02)
September's Mission founder Monica Iken describes her ideas for a memorial downtown. She urges planners to make sure that everything built on the site reflects what happened on Sept. 11, saying, "the final resting place of our lost souls is not confined to the footprints of the towers."

Six Months Later (03/11/02)
The city has made an amazing recovery in the six months since the terrorist attacks. Ground Zero will soon be cleared of rubble. Subways, schools, and businesses have reopened. And two temporary memorials will be unveiled this week. But as New York moves to the next phase of rebuilding there are many unanswered questions about what to build, who is in charge, and how it will be funded. Gotham Gazette takes a look at the status of recovery and rebuilding, how far we have come and where we are headed.

Two Views on How to Rebuild (11/26/01)
1. Make it fast, not fancy, Dick Netzer says, and in midtown, not downtown.

2. We must pause and reflect, says Nancy Biberman, before trying to build anything on the hallowed ground.

A History Of Crisis And Recovery (10/01/01)
In the very first week after the attack, the mayor looked to history for comfort and instruction in how New Yorkers could respond. The historical event he focused on was the blitz of London during World War II. But, as New Yorkers can discover in hundreds of history-related events starting this week, there is comfort and instruction as well in the long series of crises and recoveries that make up the history of New York City.