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NEW YORK, NY January 14, 2004 — The final design for the World Trade Center Memorial is unveiled on January 14. The 13-member jury announced its selection last week - a design called "Reflecting Absence." Its main features are the footprints of the two towers and a garden of trees. But the architect and landscape artist were still refining their models.

Today, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation will present their changes. WNYC's Beth Fertig sat down with the chairman of the Memorial Jury, Vartan Gregorian, in his first interview about the design. She asked him to describe what New Yorkers will see today.

Gregorian: This design is going to combine 2 major features; one is void, sign of loss, sign of disappearance. And the other is going to be grove of trees between death, mourning and life.

Fertig: What else are we going to see in the design today? Are there cultural buildings, other aspects?

Gregorian: You're going to see first of all access to the bedrock, which is very important to families and others. You're going to see a museum underground. That museum will have all artifacts, remnants of the peoples' shields, helmets, all kinds of relics.

Fertig: Michael Arad was an architect for the NYC Housing Authority. And he had originally submitted this himself. At what point did he bring Peter Walker, who was a well-known landscape architect?

Gregorian: In November when we saw it, we reduced it to three; we asked that it needed additional landscaping. It was too arid, too dry, too stark and we wanted something more dramatic. And that's where we suggested a landscape architect. And LMDC, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, provided various candidates and Arad chose Walker.

Fertig: So what did they do in past week since this was first announced, what changes have they made?

Gregorian: The size of trees, the nature of trees, what kind of trees, wind tunnel, access, slurry wall, transportation, how everything blends, how the master plan of Libeskind's, corresponds. All of this had to be resolved within last two weeks.

Fertig: How clear was it to the jurors that this was the one? A lot of these designs involved lights, there were the votives, trees in some, lots of images of water, images of the individuals who died in one. Did this one pop out to you because it was much more simplistic?

Gregorian: Not simplistic at least but simple and powerful, stark and powerful. This one was never rejected. This one was one of the three finalists. We had three finalists, each one of them good. One of them, the garden, as they expanded, as they elaborated and so forth, the whole became weaker than the parts. So people who were supporting a garden then ended up supporting Arad's project. But we had debated each one of them for hours and consensus emerged about this one. So from very beginning we did not have this one in mind. If you told me 2 days before or last week I would not have been able to tell you.

Fertig: are the names of rescuers going to be singled out separately from others?

Gregorian: I think Arad going to meet with families to involve them, how to present the names. That's one of unsettled issues that we always had left there.

Fertig: a lot of new Yorkers have criticized these designs when they were originally announced for being too generic, too much like something in a shopping mall, the lights, waterfalls not conveying horror of 9/11? Do you think this final choice conveys that?

Gregorian: I think so. First, we all welcomed all the criticism believe it or not. Because a book if not reviewed is a dead book. The same thing with a project. The very discussion that occurred about each part of the project while not pleasant was welcomed. We learned a lot from the architectural critics, ordinary citizens who criticized. But one thing I can tell you emerged. That we did not want New York to be subdued or prostrate. We wanted New York to be resilient, number one. It was symbol of resilience, defiance against those who tried to cripple the spirit of NY and the nation. Second, we chose things symbolically between gardens, flowers, which are fragile, like life but always a garden regenerates and also has light.

Fertig: Do you personally, does this final memorial design convey the horror and the other emotions of what happened on September 11th for you?

Gregorian: Yes, absolutely because when I went to Ground Zero it was as if somebody had ripped the heart of NY. And sort of awkward surgery left open wound. And the site of the buildings collapsing it was a whole horrible. And so this does not bring to conclusion for me. But rather it brings another step for reconciliation that loss happens but life must go on because we New Yorkers are resilient and defiant.

That was Vartan Gregorian, Chairman of the September 11th Memorial Jury talking with WNYC's Beth Fertig about the final design.
*Correction: The landscape architect for the memorial is Peter Walker, not Robert Walker.