9/11 National Memorial, New York

The 9/11 National Memorial, also known as the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, or simply the 9/11 National Monument and Museum is a cemetery in Lower Manhattan, New York that remembers the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The centre is located on the site of the World Trade Center, on the same location as the Twin Towers destroyed in the September 11, 2001 attacks. The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation changed its name to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center in 2007. The design winner for the World Trade Center Site Memorial competition was Israeli-American architect Michael Arad of Handel Architects, a firm in San Francisco and New York. Arad worked with landscape architecture firm Peter Walker and Partners on the design in what they call a ‘forest of trees’ with two twin pools in the centre, on the foundation where the Twin Towers once stood.2

The design is consistent with Daniel Libeskind’s original, in which the memorial would be 30 feet below street level (originally 70 feet) in a plaza. The design was the only finalist of Libeskind’s requirements that included the foundations of the Twin Towers.

A temporary memorial was placed just after the attacks on the World Trade Center to remember the victims and the heroes who fell during the attack. The National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center is a non-profit foundation to raise funds, and operate the monument and museum at the World Trade Center site. The site also remembers the victims of the 1993 bombing that occurred in the World Trade Center’s basement. Since the memorial for this attack was in the square of the original World Trade Center and was destroyed after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

The memorial was opened in 2011, while the museum was inaugurated in 2014.