A design chosen from thousands
In January 2004, Reflecting Absence by the architect Michael Arad and the landscape architect Peter Walker was chosen from 5,201 entries from 63 countries in the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition.
Two pools in the footprints
Two pools of about an acre each lie within the footprints of the Twin Towers. Water falls on every side into each pool and then into a central void whose bottom cannot be seen, so that the water flows without ever filling it: a symbol of a loss that can never be filled.
The names
The names of the 2,983 people killed on 11 September 2001 and on 26 February 1993 are cut into 152 bronze parapets around the pools. Nearby stands the Survivor Tree, a Callery pear recovered from the rubble in October 2001 and replanted on the Memorial, and the Memorial Glade, opened in 2019 for first responders who later became sick or died after exposure to toxins at the site.
