A Memorial to the Unthinkable​

By Van Jensen

Michael Arad stood on the roof of his Lower East Side apartment and watched as the world fell apart.

It was the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. Arad was 32, an architect working for New York City’s Housing Authority, two years removed from earning a master’s degree at Georgia Tech. People were saying a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers. And then, as Arad watched, a second plane appeared and cleaved into the South Tower.

Arad, a London-born former Israeli soldier who is a dual Israeli-American citizen, ran toward the site, wanting to do something. He had come within a few blocks when the south tower fell.

In the numb aftermath of the disaster, as New Yorkers covered with dust and blood wandered Manhattan’s streets and the scope of the terrorist attacks became known, Arad couldn’t shake the absence of the towers — and the nearly 3,000 victims — from his thoughts.

In this excerpt from his lecture titled "Reflecting Absence: the 9/11 Memorial," which was presented at Georgia Tech in February 2012, Arad explains his original vision for the 9/11 Memorial. View the entire lecture. Credit: Georgia Tech Library archives



A few months had passed when a vision appeared to Arad: The water of the Hudson River flowing along, then suddenly disappearing into two square-shaped holes, footprints of the missing towers.

Arad sat down and began to sketch on a yellow piece of paper. Rough lines marked the riverbank, and light shading marked the water. And there, in the river, two squares, perfectly black. Twin voids.

“It was an inexplicable image, because water doesn’t behave that way,” Arad said. “But it intrigued me, and so I built a model. I photographed it on the rooftop and could see the absence of the towers being reflected by these voids in the river. I wondered: How could that be explored further?”

Two years passed. Like other New Yorkers, Arad returned to his life. And yet, things weren’t the same.

The towers were gone. In their place was only wreckage that disappeared one truck-full at a time from the 16 acres that came to be known as “the pile,” or “the pit,” or simply as Ground Zero.

Something had to be done with the space, and finally it was announced that a juried contest would determine the design of a memorial.

Arad had continued thinking about his design of the twin voids. But the passage of time had changed his concept, toned down the raw pain of his earliest sketch. He recalled a late-night walk to Washington Square Park when he was unable to sleep in the months after the attacks.

“As I walked about the eerily empty and quiet streets of lower Manhattan, I was drawn to the fountain at the center of this public space,” he said. “There I found a few other people standing in silent contemplation. As I joined this circle — strangers both to me and to each other — I felt a sense of kinship and belonging. I was no longer confronting the horrors I had seen alone.

“I could not articulate it clearly at that moment, but I felt a bond form as I understood that I was a New Yorker now in a way I had never been before.”

Arad’s vision was no longer of a lonely memorial in the Hudson River, out of reach, but of one incorporated into the city. A memorial that would be a shared space, a continuing site for remembrance and bonding.

His idea dovetailed with the master plan for the site drawn up by Daniel Libeskind, master plan architect of the Trade Center site. And so Arad revisited his sketch, transposing it onto the eight-acre space dedicated to the memorial. It would be an open plaza punctuated by the two square footprints of the towers as below-ground reflecting pools ringed by waterfalls.

As Arad described it, the new plan was the union of the grief of his original vision and the healing and togetherness of his experience that night in Washington Square Park. He sent his design in, one of 5,201 that would be received.

The jury named Arad a finalist, but they said his design was too stark. Arad then partnered with landscape architect Peter Walker and incorporated trees and other landscaping elements into the plan.

Word came back in January of 2004: Arad and Walker’s design was the winner. Vartan Gregorian, who chaired the 14-member jury, said, “The result is a memorial that expresses both the incalculable loss of life, and regeneration.”

Previously an unknown architect, Arad knew this was the opportunity of a lifetime. But he didn’t know that the selection would come with so many challenges. He didn’t know how much work and stress and uncertainty and media scrutiny would fill the next eight years as he fought to bring his vision to life.

The Ski Bum

The son of an Israeli ambassador, Arad graduated from Dartmouth in 1994 and didn’t know what to do with himself. So he moved to Colorado and became a self-described ski bum.

Two paths opened to him: He was accepted to law school in Israel and a master’s program at Georgia Tech’s College of Architecture.

“I’ve always been interested in design and architecture,” Arad said. “But I was apprehensive. It seemed like the kind of field that was very challenging. There are very few opportunities available.”

For a year he enjoyed the slopes and mulled his choices. Law school was the safe route, but architecture seemed more attuned to his passion for art and design.

“I had to make a choice, and I struggled with it,” he said. “But I felt I should try something that felt more unknown and riskier. It was something I cared more deeply about. Even if I was frustrated.”

Arad had no architecture background, and so he entered Tech’s intensive three-year graduate program. He recalled it as an “excellent” if challenging experience, one that gave him a thorough foundation.

Tech’s College of Architecture doesn’t hew to a single aesthetic ideology, and Arad soaked up the distinct voices of his professors. He recalled classes with professor Douglas Allen as putting architecture into the context of history and the surrounding urban form. He learned he needed to bring his own voice to a project while collaborating with others. It was advice that would serve him well in the years ahead.

In the near-constant media coverage of the construction at Ground Zero, a picture emerged of Arad as young, impetuous, and brash. Walker, the landscape architect, told The New York Times that he and Arad argued over every aspect of placing trees at the site. Arad also had shouted and stormed out of meetings “many, many times,” Walker said.

Arad battled with the architect Libeskind over placement of the memorial. The master plan called for it to be situated within a larger plaza, while Arad thought of the entire plaza as the memorial.

For his part, Arad admits he defended his vision but disagrees with the perception of him as a hothead.

“The brash approach sounds like good copy. But that’s not going to get a project like this built,” he said.

In those early years, the completion of the project was far from assured. Numerous groups with conflicting interests — the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the developer Larry Silverstein, the Memorial Foundation, and others — wrestled for creative and financial control.

Meanwhile, the memorial’s price tag skyrocketed. What was to have been a $350 million project had ballooned to $500 million in 2006. At that point, the foundation president decided to halt fundraising, which had brought in only $100 million.

The New York Times said the project was “spinning out of control,” and New York magazine claimed it to be “on the brink of collapse.”