Informal memo- rial incorporating an architectural drawing of the former World Trade Centre’s Twin Towers, at the intersection of hoarding wall and a pedestrian over- pass at Liberty and West Streets, May 2005.
But, the desire to mark the space, to communicate by leaving a subjec- tive trace upon it, cannot be entirely contained. There is a threshold where the WTC site meets the World Financial Centre, where a small corner of hoarding wall is visible and accessible to visitors making their way around the chain link. Despite its insignificant size, this corner, when I saw it, was replete with memorabilia. An architectural drawing of the Twin Towers was at the centre of this informal memo- rial corner. Passersby stopped to study the image, using it to discuss the structure, where people had worked, where the planes had made contact — the image served heuristically, as a means of helping people make sense of this place in relation to themselves, and to history. The informality of the location, and the arguably clichéd nature of the sentiments expressed (“ amplify love, dissipate hate” ) might explain what appears to be official response to such expressions: to excise and dis- pose of them. But for me, this corner was the only respository within the whole site that even began to express the complexity of 9/11 and its impact. A most telling detail: tucked almost out of sight between the plywood and the metal tubing of the scaffold, was a bottle of spray cleaner: someone maintains this very vulnerable collecting point of shared, but not homogeneous, memory. These actions and objects can be understood as a small interruption in the marshalling of triumphal sentiments at ground zero, suggesting that the site – despite concerted efforts to the contrary – is a palimp- sest, and the land it occupies is contested. The richness, contradiction and polyvalency of informal memorial practices at the WTC site reflect the emotional reason that ordinary people have exercised in this place since September 11, 2001. Could these practices have been a constitu- tive element in the conception and design process of both the new Freedom Tower and Reflecting Absence , the official memorial? These final designs lack both the compassionate invitation of the plywood at the Fulton Street platform and the longing, collectivity and spontaneity of the walls of memory that errupted onto and nearby the site immedi- ately after the disaster. The ‘official’ public has been given a frustratingly foreshortened role in the reconceptualization of the World Trade Centre site. But the other public, in attendance at and contributing to the site, has not. If the players involved in future memorial projects were to take Herbert Muschamp’s plea in 2001 that WTC site planners “not overlook the meaning of events as they unfold”, then they could do no better than to visit those informal sites of mourning and remembrance, and learn from the unfolding of complexity, contradiction and nuance that they offer. c Peter Lucas, ‘The Missing Person Photos’, in Public Sentiments: The Scholar and Feminist Online 2 , 1 (2003) The Barnard Centre for Research on Women <http://www.barnard.edu/sfonline/ps/printplu.htm>. Accessed June 12, 2005. Lower Manhattan Info, ‘New Viewing Wall Opens at WTC Site’ 10 Sept. 2002. <http://www.lowermanhattan.info/news/new_viewing_wall_opens_25086.asp>. Accessed July 10, 2005.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s “viewing wall” (designed in collaboration with the Lower Manhattan Develop- ment Corporation and a pro bono consultation group called New York New Visions), is made of chain link, is 1800 feet long and borders Church and Liberty Streets. It replaced the Fulton Street viewing platform, designed by by Diller + Scofido, Kevin Kennon, and the Rockwell Group.
Cynthia Hammond holds a SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship at the School of Architecture, McGill University. In addition to teaching art and architec- tural history, she maintains a visual art practice, through which she engages with questions of the built environ - ment and public inclusivity.
Herbert Muschamp uses this term in ‘The Commemorative Beauty of Tragic Wreckage’. New York Times 11 November 2001: AR37.
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