Revised Vision For WTC Memorial

The architect chosen to design the World Trade Center memorial unveiled a revised vision for the site Wednesday, adding lush greenery and park plazas around sunken reflecting pools that mark the collapsed towers' footprints.

The revision also includes an underground museum that will display twisted steel beams from the towers, a crushed fire truck and other artifacts from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

A stone container at the bottom of one of the building's foundations will contain remains of unidentified victims of the attacks.

"This memorial is not for us — although we have been trusted with its creation," said Mayor Michael Bloomberg. "It is for our children and grandchildren. People generations from now will come and know what happened on Sept. 11.

"It's going to be a thoughtful place, a place where people say 'Never again, and we're not going to let the terrorists beat us,'" Bloomberg said.

Architect Michael Arad's design, "Reflecting Absence," was chosen last week from eight finalists by a 13-member jury to remember the victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks and 1993 bombing of the trade center. A total of 5,201 plans for the memorial were submitted from 63 countries and 49 states.

Daniel Libeskind, the architect who drafted the master plan for the site, said Arad agreed to change his plan for the memorial to reconcile it with Libeskind's plans for entire the 16-acre site. Other changes were requested by the jury after relatives of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the attacks complained.

In Arad's original design, the pools were interspersed with a scattering of pine trees, which Arad said were intended to reflect the height of the towers. The pines are now to be replaced with groves of trees to symbolize life and rebirth, jury foreman Vartan Gregorian said.

The jury also recommended that the "Tribute in Light," the twin towers of light stretching above the Manhattan skyline to mark the anniversary, be retained, Gregorian said.

The Coalition of 9/11 Families released a statement praising the memorial's new look, but adding that more work is necessary.

"These revisions show that the Sept. 11 families and the general public have finally been given a voice in this process," said coalition board member Patricia Reilly, whose sister died in the attack.

A ramp leading down to the museum would pass by exposed parts of the slurry wall, the last remnant of the towers' complex. Family groups had pressed for the wall and the bedrock at the heart of the towers' foundations to be visible in the final design.

"Memorials should leave room to imagine, visual space for people to react in their own ways and I think this design, in a very simple and eloquent way, really has done that," said Bloomberg.

Arad, a 34-year-old assistant architect at the city Housing Authority, said the victims' names will be arranged in no particular order around the reflecting pools. Rescue workers killed during the terrorist attack will be designated by placement of their agency's insignia alongside their name.

"The haphazard brutality of the attacks is reflected in the arrangement of names, and no attempt is made to impose order upon this suffering," said a statement from Arad and landscaper Peter Walker, who also worked on the design.