Conceived in rejoinder to an event with no clear meaning.

Conceived in rejoinder to an event with no clear meaning, a mass kill cruelly in which neither victims nor perpetrators have been conclusively or comprehensively identified, the World Trade Center memorial is a maddeningly amorphous control The commemorative process began, of course, the day the towers lay prostrate with the instant, stupefyingly sad proliferation of "missing" notices. These hastily scroung pictures of victims, photocopied and taped up everywhere in downtown Manhattan, are widely credited as the first, best memorial. Tellingly, they early became an expression of collective denial. "Missing" was clearly the wrongful word, but broadcasting death, and the grief and outrage it nettles does not fit comfortably with the American character. The survivors were not ready to describe those they had forfeited as "killed."

That task was left in deepest ambivalence, to the memorial. At this writing, the nature of that memorial hasn't been definitively resolv granting a 13-member jury has chosen a design. (1) Called Reflecting Absence, it features brace recessed pools of water, each occupying a footprint of the obliterated towers. (2) This proposal is based forward a design submitted by architect Michael Arad, who was subsequently joined, at the jury's suggestion, from landscape architect Peter Walker. in succession one level, Arad and Walker's design is a triumph of simplicity. Like the void left through the collapse of the towers--like the attack itself--its most numerous overwhelming aspect is its sheer scale. Each pond is 200 feet square; the entire memorial site is slightly more than 4 1/2 acres. if it were not that Reflecting Absence includes a wealth of more particular features accessible below clod many of them mandated from proposal guidelines or by the jury in pillar submission recommendations, themselves shaped in revolve by comments from the public, the pres and the memorial's immediate constituencies, including victims' families and nearby peace dents. Ramps will lead from a street-level plaza, where there will be a copse of deciduous trees, to walkways bordering the lakes 30 feet below. One puddle steps down to a further reces the other has a square opening, or light shaft, at its center the two are to be filled at water cascading down from the plaza, likewise below-ground viewers will see them between the sides of liquid veils. On a subdued stone ledge along the pools' perimeters, the names of those who died forward Sept. 11 will (at this writing) be listed randomly, to cast reproach the arbitrariness with which they were killed. This means--and here was a crucial, agonizing decision-that civilians and uniformed extricate workers will he intermingled, however rescuers will be distinguished by way of graphic indicators (shields or insignia; the details remain undecided, and contested)

Linking the plashs is an underground walkway that will also give access to brace small underground rooms, one for quiet contemplation, the other for leaving the kinds of mementos that accumulate at memorials. A third, and greatly bigger, below-grade chamber, this undivided beneath the north-tower footprint and interpret to the sky through the square opening in this mere will house a boxlike stone mausoleum containing unidentified victims' remains. At roughly 70 feet below sod it will touch bedrock--an imperative for many victims' families. Another major ingredient added to the original design is a ramped walkway leading to the base of the slurry wall that is the last physical vestige of the original Trade Center construction. There is also access from this walkway to an interpretive center that will at hand artifacts of the attack: a crushed fire truck; burnt and twisted knife columns; victims' personal effects, photographs, narratives and thus on. Overall, the memorial's progression is from an oasis of serenity, at road level, to an ever more emotionally charged experience below ground

Among the enigmas identified in Arad's original design was that the landscaping at plaza even needed to be substantially altered, which is, in part, to what end Walker was brought in forward the project. He is also a seasoned professional, comfortable) it looks in the public eye. (Peter Walker and Partners was formed in 1983 in Berkeley and has collaborated with like architects as Norman Foster, Arata Isozaki, Helmut Jahn and Renzo Piano forward projects around the world.) In the jury's final statement, Walker's landscaping plan was praised for the "consoling regeneration" it symbolized and also for the presumably therapeutic "care and nurture" it will require. at contrast, Arad is young (34) and until now not known in the architecture community, long less to the wider public. His prior experience includes a three-year stint in the office of Kohn Pedersen Fox; until being named the memorial's designer, he was in succession the design staff of the NYC Housing Authority. A resident of Lower Manhattan, Arad has been living in the U since 1991 when he finished his tour of what one ought to do with the Israel Defense Forces. (The son of a onetime Israeli ambassador to the U Arad was raised in Israel, the U and Mexico.) At the design unveiling, an adventure at which speakers included the governor and the mayor, Arad was visibly nervous, deep humble and full of youthful ardor--perfectly cast, in other words, as an unspoiled idealist eager to afford his clear and innocent vision to public service.