Reflecting Absence is the winning proposal for the World Trade Center site memorial. The original design concept was submitted by Michael Arad, an architect for the Housing Authority of New York City. He refined his original concept with the assistance of Peter Walker, a landscape architect from Berkeley, California. Announced as the winning design on January 6, 2004, it was then further refined to be better integrated with the master plan for the entire site, and to address criticism of the bleak tone of the original landscaping.
The primary feature of the design is two recesses, thirty feet in depth, in the precise footprints of the twin towers that were destroyed on September 11, 2001. The walls of the recesses will be sheets of falling water, and visitors will be able to descend to underground walkways that surround the pools of water at the bottom of the recesses, to peer through the sheets of water at the voids where the towers once stood. The names of the victims of 9/11 will be arranged in a random order around the pools. The surrounding plaza will be a verdant landscape.
