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The global reach of 9/11 through the memorials across the world

2021-09-11T20:16:00-04:00

Since the events of 9/11 twenty years ago, a vast array of memorials, from modest sculptures to landscaped gardens, have been erected across the world, honoring the victims, survivors, and first responders. While many of the overseas works are lesser known, they have an equally local and worldwide meaning, paying homage to specific individuals and groups while commemorating the tragedy, as a whole. Many are composed of repurposed steel from the towers, breathing new life and meaning into the former structures. In honor of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, here is a collection of impactful tributes, from New Zealand to Germany.

Tribute to Firefighters (2002). Image: Courtesy Graham Bennet

Tribute to Firefighters (2002), Christchurch, New Zealand - Graham Bennett

Sculptor Graham Bennett was invited by the Christchurch City Council to create a sculpture commemorating the firefighters whose lives were lost during 9/11. The piece is composed of steel from the World Trade Center that had fal...

A look back at Archinect on September 11th, 2001

2021-09-11T20:02:00-04:00

I was staying at a friend’s apartment in the heart of Hollywood on the evening of September 10th, 2001. I had to wake up unnaturally early the next morning to move my car to avoid getting a parking ticket. I vividly recall the eery feeling squeezed into the tiny old elevator as I descended the building with more neighbors than I would have expected to be awake at that hour. Nobody said anything. I could tell something was off. The moment I got into my car the radio quickly caught me up. In fact, it was right at the moment the second plane hit the towers… a little after the 6 am deadline to move my car out of the streetcleaner’s way. I don’t remember re-parking my car or returning to the apartment, but I clearly remember spending the next many hours jumping between the television, my phone, and my computer, taking in the horror and working it out with friends, family, and colleagues in real-time.

Screenshot of Archinect from September 2001

Archinect was only 4 years old at that time....

Twenty years in the making, EarthCam pays tribute to the World Trade Center site with an epic time-lapse video

2021-09-10T15:32:00-04:00

Twenty years after 9/11, the popular geographic livestream site EarthCam has revealed its commemoration of the tragedy using footage taken from two decades of loss and rebuilding.

EarthCam founder Brian Cury installed the camera in the days following the attacks to document the monumental recovery effort taking place in lower Tribeca. The twenty-five-year-old company, which is headquartered just across the Hudson in Upper Saddle River, NJ, has been continuously recording the site since then, making it the longest-running time-lapse project in EarthCam history.

Now, with unseen footage taken by cameras that captured every day of the past twenty years in thirteen million individual photographs, the interregnum has been reduced to a six-minute encapsulation of the transformation of the sixteen-acre site from an active crime scene to an eerie void and finally to its current form as a tourist destination and memory site visited by over 6.5 million people per year.

“This creative time-lap...

After brief uncertainty, 9/11 memorial display to go ahead as usual

2020-08-17T15:56:00-04:00

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum’s Tribute in Light will shine this year after all, officials said on Saturday. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said the state would provide the health personnel and supervision so that the display, which has memorialized the attacks on the Twin Towers since 2002, could safely continue.

The Museum had previously canceled this year's display due to coronavirus concerns for the workers paid to install the 88 light bulbs that make up the installation. After New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and other stepped into insure safety for these workers, however, memorial officials changed course and will produce the familiar twin towered memorial light display for this year's 9/11 anniversary.

New memorial at World Trade Center site to honor those affected by 9/11-related illnesses

2019-02-04T16:09:00-05:00

The New York Post reports that the 9/11 Memorial and Museum plans to open a section dedicated to those who’ve died or have grappled with 9/11-related illnesses—first responders, survivors, and New Yorkers who lived close to the World Trade Center site during the recovery efforts among them.

According to the New York Post, the designers of the landmark Reflecting Absence 9/11 Memorial, architect Michael Arad and landscape architect Peter Walker, were also in charge of planning this new memorial which is expected to be finished by May 30.

Skylight of Santiago Calatrava's WTC Oculus to reopen for 9/11 anniversary

2018-09-10T17:30:00-04:00

The opening allows for the “Way of Light” to pass through the main hub of the transit hall at 10:28 a.m.—the moment that the North Tower of the WTC collapsed on September 11, 2001. The path along which the light travels inside the hall symbolizes “the light that continues to shine through after the darkness of the tragedy,” says a spokesperson for the Oculus.

The 9/11 Gift Shop Sells Tacky Tchotchkes Because We'll Buy Them

2014-05-27T17:51:00-04:00

By most measures, the museum, designed by Davis Brody Bond and Snøhetta, has met the difficult challenge of telling the emotionally charged story of 9/11 at Ground Zero. The gift shop, however, has detracted from the achievement, with tabloids and blogs lambasting the “darkness” hoodies, toy firetrucks, “survivor tree” earrings, and 9/11 cheese plate for sale in the gift shop.

Architecture review: At 9/11 Memorial Museum, a relentless literalism

2014-05-27T14:23:00-04:00

Many New Yorkers, still trying to make sense of the 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center, have had a single question as a museum was being built at ground zero: Too soon? Now that the 9/11 Memorial Museum, as it's officially called, has opened to the public, they and others may find themselves asking something else: Too much? The museum is an overstuffed answer to the appealing minimalism of the 9/11 memorial and its cascading pools, which opened in 2011.

Previously: Sept. 11 Memorial Museum at Ground Zero Prepares for Opening

Sept. 11 Memorial Museum at Ground Zero Prepares for Opening

2014-05-14T13:38:00-04:00

After a decade marked by deep grief, partisan rancor, war, financial boondoggles and inundation from Hurricane Sandy, the National September 11 Memorial Museum at ground zero is finally opening ceremonially on Thursday, with President Obama present, and officially to the public next Wednesday. It delivers a gut-punch experience — though if ever a new museum had looked, right along, like a disaster in the making, this one did, beginning with its trifurcated identity.

A Memorial Inscription’s Grim Origins

2014-04-03T14:29:00-04:00

When the National September 11 Memorial Museum opens next month at the World Trade Center, visitors will find a stark wall separating them from a repository containing about 8,000 unidentified human remains from the 2001 terrorist attack. On the wall is a 60-foot-long inscription, in 15-inch letters [...]: “No day shall erase you from the memory of time. Virgil.” [...] I asked a half-dozen classicists about the use of this inscription at the memorial museum. All but one questioned the choice.

At 9/11 Museum, Talking Through an Identity Crisis

2012-06-02T13:06:00-04:00

“Memorial Museum” — is something of a contradiction in terms... “Museums are about understanding, about making meaning of the past... A memorial fulfills a different need; it’s about remembering and evoking feelings in the viewer, and that function is antithetical to what museums do.” Reconciling the clashing obligations to recount the history with pinpoint accuracy, to memorialize heroism and to promote healing inevitably required compromise. No one anticipated how much.

9/11 Memorial Gets Google Mapped

2011-09-22T14:14:49-04:00

Google is committed to providing our users with the richest, most up-to-date maps possible. [...] In this case, the edit for the 9/11 memorial site was made by a map maker user on Sept 12, 2011.

That was fast.

Could Hurricane Irene Uproot the 9/11 Memorial?

2011-08-27T18:47:37-04:00

“It’s never good to have a hurricane two weeks before opening,” Matthew Donham told The Observer. Mr. Donham is the project manager at PWP Landscape Architecture, the firm that helped design the memorial plaza with architect Michael Arad. [...] “We’ll actually fair better than a nearby street tree,” Mr. Donham said.

Sure, the 9/11 memorial will not be destroyed if Hurricane Irene hits New York City, but what kind of shape it will be in is a whole other story.