The 9/11 Memorial's winning design ignored a key rule in the master plan
Michael Arad's design for the World Trade Center memorial, Reflecting Absence, was the only finalist that refused to let new buildings hang over the Twin Towers' footprints. Instead it sank two square pools into a grove of swamp white oaks, and it survived protests and a budget that briefly topped $1 billion.
The memorial and museum commemorate the September 11, 2001, attacks, which killed 2,977 people, and the February 26, 1993, bombing of the World Trade Center, which killed six. In 2003 the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation opened an international design competition. A thirteen-member jury named eight finalists on November 19, 2003, and on January 6, 2004, chose the scheme by Arad, of Handel Architects, working with the landscape firm Peter Walker and Partners. Daniel Libeskind's master plan had placed the memorial in a plaza 30 feet below street level, down from an original 70 feet.
Money nearly derailed it. In May 2006 the construction manager Lendlease put the memorial and museum at $672 million, and at least $973 million once roads, utilities, a cooling plant and foundation walls were included. Reported estimates soon passed $1 billion. At the request of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governor George Pataki, builder Frank Sciame spent a month consulting families, residents, architects and jurors, and his changes brought the project back within about $500 million. Some relatives protested when work began on March 13, 2006, arguing the memorial belonged above ground.
Construction moved in stages. The Survivors' Staircase reached bedrock in July 2008, the first artifact placed in the museum, and that September a 7,700-pound column went up near the North Tower's footprint. Around 9,100 short tons of steel went into the site. Waterfall testing started in the North Pool in November 2010, and by early September 2011 some 243 trees had been planted.
The memorial was dedicated on the tenth anniversary and opened to the public on September 12, 2011; within three months more than a million people had visited. For nearly three years it sat inside a construction zone, and its fence came down on May 25, 2014. The museum was dedicated on May 15, 2014, with Bloomberg and President Barack Obama speaking, and families of those killed on September 11 pay no admission.
Source: National September 11 Memorial & Museum
