8. An International Competition Was Held For The Design of The Memorial

Design concept for the memorial. Image via PWP Landscape Architecture 

In 2003, a competition was held to choose the design for the 9/11 National Memorial with considerably less controversy than over the design of the World Trade Center site itself. There were a total of 5,201 submissions from 63 nations. The winning design “Reflecting Absence” came from architects Michael Arad and Peter Walker. You can read an excerpt from their submission detailing the reasons behind their design decisions here. According to the Memorial Jury that chose the winner, the design “fulfills most eloquently the daunting but absolutely necessary demands of this memorial. In its powerful, yet simple articulation of the footprints of the Twin Towers, ‘Reflecting Absence’ has made the voids left by the destruction the primary symbols of our loss.
“By allowing absence to speak for itself, the designers have made the power of these empty footprints the memorial. At its core, this memorial is anchored deeply in the actual events it commemorates-connecting us to the towers’ destruction, and more important, to all the lives lost on that day….”