Reflecting Absence
Michael Arad and Peter Walker's Reflecting Absence consists of a field of trees interrupted by two large voids containing recessed pools, marking the footprints of the Twin Towers. The deciduous trees (swamp white oaks) are arranged in rows, forming informal clusters, clearings and groves. The park is at street level, sitting above the Memorial Museum. The World Trade Center site is a bathtub, as the area was excavated to construct the original World Trade Center and the earth was used to build Battery Park City, a neighboring residential community.
The names of the victims of the attacks (including those from the Pentagon, American Airlines flight 77, and United Airlines flight 93) and the 1993 bombing are inscribed on the parapets surrounding the waterfalls, in an arrangement based on "meaningful adjacencies".
A portion of the Slurry Wall (approximately half of what Daniel Libeskind originally wanted to preserve), originally designed to hold back the Hudson River, will be maintained in the Museum.
Read more about this topic: World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition
Famous quotes containing the words reflecting and/or absence:
“The mention of one apartment in a building naturally introduces an enquiry or discourse concerning the others: and if we think of a wound, we can scarcely forbear reflecting on the pain which follows it.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“We want in every man a long logic; we cannot pardon the absence of it, but it must not be spoken. Logic is the procession or proportionate unfolding of the intuition; but its virtue is as silent method; the moment it would appear as propositions and have a separate value, it is worthless.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)