This afternoon, Bloomberg and company announced the new schematic plan for Michael Arad's World Trade Center memorial. Though it's difficult to decipher from the press release exactly what the changes are, they appear to be minimal, along the lines of "this pipe now goes there." Dense description of the revisions after the jump for those interested in where the truck ramp is now going to be.
· Images of World Trade Center Memorial [Yahoo! News]
Through the schematic design process, an intense period of investigation and design advancement, an even more poetic and precise design has developed. The design allows for visitors to enter the memorial between the footprints descending down two 200-foot ramps, first to the west and then to the east, and landing on the memorial level. The memorial level includes Memorial Hall connecting the two viewing galleries that surround the reflecting pools and whose exterior walls delineate the original footprints. Between the two pools, and off Memorial Hall, visitors can travel down to the lowest level of the memorial where the Contemplation Room, family area, and space for the medical examiner are found. On the lowest level, the exposed box beam remnants can be seen and touched and in the northwest quadrant, visitors will see and touch the massive edifice of the exposed slurry wall. As visitors return above ground to the plaza level, the surrounding trees mediate their return to daily life.
By working with the adjacent projects, the design team established an elevation for the Memorial plaza which minimizes steps and walls surrounding the plaza. To further increase accessibility to the Memorial, the truck ramp once envisioned for location on the southern portion of the memorial site has been relocated to the south of Liberty Street, making the memorial area a completely pedestrian experience and an integral part of Lower Manhattan.
· New Details of World Trade Center Memorial Revealed [renewnyc.com]