World Trade Center memorial concepts narrowed to finalists

NEW YORK -- The eight designs unveiled Wednesday as finalists for a World Trade Center memorial remember the dead with quiet gardens, reflecting pools, inscribed names and lights for lost lives.

All eight designs, selected from a pool of 5,200, list the names of those who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, as well as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The names are inscribed on granite walls, glass panels and stone columns, some alphabetically and others according to where the individuals died.

"We have sought designs that represent the heights of imagination while incorporating aesthetic grace and spiritual strength," the jury that chose the finalists said in a statement.

The finalists, whose identities were made public for the first time Wednesday, range from local artists to international architects. The eight proposals were picked by a 13-member jury, which will choose the winning design by the end of the year.

John Whitehead, chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which is overseeing the rebuilding of the site, praised the organic connections shared by all the entries.

"Their designs draw upon the elements of light, water, earth and life itself," Whitehead said at a news conference where the proposals were unveiled.

The proposals include private areas for relatives of the victims and a tomb for unidentified remains of people killed when the twin towers were hit by hijacked planes and collapsed. The remains of about 60 percent of the 2,752 people killed in the twin towers attack have been identified.

All of the designs preserve the huge wall that once formed the trade center basement, the only surviving remnant of the original complex.

The eight proposals, accompanied by videotaped interviews of finalists talking about their designs, were displayed at the World Financial Center's Winter Garden, near where the towers stood.

Family members of those who died were shown the designs before the unveiling and said they mostly approved of the plans.

"I thought they captured the essence of what the memorial should be," said Christine Huhn-Graifman, who lost her husband in the attack.

But some said the plans did not provide enough access to the bedrock level of the trade center site. As it stands now, the redevelopment plan preserves the approximate circumference of the towers, but construction would encroach on the twin towers' footprints at bedrock level.