Jury of 13 will choose memorial design

Inspiration and flexibility were the watchwords yesterday as redevelopment officials formally launched a worldwide competition to design the memorial that will be the centerpiece of the rebuilt World Trade Center site.

"We are looking for the most creative ideas," said Kevin Rampe, acting president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC), the agency that is overseeing the competition. "We want the best possible memorial… and we're not going to do anything to limit the creativity of the process."

Also on hand for the event at the World Financial Winter Garden was the entire 13-member jury that will ultimately choose the winning design. Among the jurors who spoke was Maya Lin, an architect and artist who is best known as the designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. 

Those who would design the memorial, Lin suggested, should be guided by a sense of "what [they] truly believe needs to be done there" rather than any preconceived notion of what a memorial is supposed to look like.

"I think great art says something new every single time… yet we can all recognize it as something very familiar," she added later. Lin said she hoped the competition would result in "a new way of defining what a memorial can be."

Jury member James Young promises open minds

Rampe and other officials briefly reviewed the competition guidelines and also discussed how members of the public will be involved in the process as it moves forward. The first step will come on May 28, when a public hearing will be held so interested persons can share with jurors their ideas about what the memorial should accomplish.

Members of the public will also have an opportunity to view the five or so design finalists after they are selected in the fall. The precise manner in which this will be done has yet to be determined.

The competition asks would-be entrants to include five specific program elements -- recognizing each individual victim of the attacks; providing an area for quiet contemplation; providing an area for victims' family members; creating a final resting place for unidentified remains, and preserving the footprints of the original towers -- that were determined by LMDC in consultation with the agency's Families Advisory Council and other members of the public.

It furthermore restricts the memorial to a specific 4.7-acre space designated in architect Daniel Libeskind's master plan.

While Rampe conceded that he did not want to encourage people to ignore these and other guidelines, he also said that jury members would be permitted to select as finalists designs that do not exactly meet the various parameters if they are "truly exceptional."

In general, the design review process is a typical one for competitions of this nature. Jury members will consider each entry without knowing the identity of its designer(s). LMDC will keep the entries, which are to be submitted as 30-by-40-inch presentation boards, at an undisclosed location where they can be posted for viewing. Entries will also likely be converted to electronic or paper form, enabling jurors to view them at their convenience.

LMDC's Kevin Rampe discusses guidelines

The submission guidelines themselves are less flexible than the design program. Entries that do not comply with the stated guidelines will not be viewed by jury members, said Matt Higgins, a spokesman for the agency.

Entrants are required to submit a $25 fee, which will go toward the eventual construction of the memorial. Entrants must be 18, but minors may enter under the sponsorship of an adult. Participants must register by the end of May and submissions are due at the end of June. There are few restrictions otherwise.

A website dedicated to the competition --- http://www.wtcsitememorial.org -- went live shortly after the conclusion of the event. Those without access to a computer may fax a written request for guidelines or a registration form to (800) 717-5699. While the web materials have also been posted in Spanish and Chinese, all submissions must be in English.

A final design will be selected in the fall, after which construction will begin as soon as possible, Rampe said. Funding sources for the memorial have not yet been determined, he added, but the LMDC will explore public and private sources.

Rick Bell, executive director of the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects, told reporters that non-design professionals were not necessarily at a disadvantage in the process. "A two-stage competition allows someone who has a very creative idea to put it down in fairly sketchy terms. That idea is either going to resonate with the jury or not."

Artists and architects may be able to present an idea skillfully, Bell said, but ultimately "the idea will out if it has a validity that makes sense to the site, makes sense to the jury, makes sense to the world."

For more information, including detailed rules of the competition, visit www.wtcsitememorial.org. To obtain a hard copy of the guidelines or a registration form, fax a request to (800) 717-5699.