"When you walk in, all you see is a construction site.
Amid the hum and rumble of downtown Manhattan -- not to mention the clang of steel and the tangle of cranes -- hard-hatted workers in fluorescent orange vests yell orders, spread cement, move machines. Empty boxes litter the ground. Shop lights hang from extension cords like Christmas bulbs.
Stacks of paving stones, cinderblocks and plywood are everywhere. Scaffolding and mesh divide work areas from visitors. Chain-link fencing marks a perimeter; beyond it, iron and steel rise from bedrock.
At one end of ground zero, a new skyscraper -- 1 World Trade Center, once known as Freedom Tower -- rises almost 80 stories. A September 11 museum is nearing completion; it will open next year. Three more office towers are in various states of development. Eventually, a transportation hub and shopping arcade will connect the complex underground. The entire project is expected to be finished around 2015.
But among the construction, there is a finished plaza. And at the center of the plaza, there is only stillness.
Two pools -- "voids," as designer Michael Arad calls them -- plunge into the Earth. Located on the footprints of the old Twin Towers, they are giant, empty, open-topped cubes. Their walls are clad in dark granite, their lips surrounded by brass parapets engraved with nearly 3,000 names: those killed here on September 11 as well as in a 1993 attack on the World Trade Center.
It's a sight that would appear to be almost "more than any of us can bear," to borrow the words of former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, except for two things: the trees and the water.
The trees -- more than 400 -- line the walkways and plaza leading to the voids. All but one are recent transplants. The lone "Survivor Tree," a callery pear, was found in the ruins and nursed back to health. The greenery provides a bucolic sense in the midst of city concrete.
And then, in the dry granite voids, the water is turned on. It falls beneath the names etched in brass and into the pools below, washing away the city noise in a cool spray. The waterfalls create a sense of peace and solace, softening the voids' stark chasms."
Pour le reste de l'article:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/08/31/911.memorial/index.html?hpt=hp_c1
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