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Latest design for 9/11 museum merges old and new
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-09-10 17:47 The ground floor will have ticket windows, a large security area in which visitors will undergo airport-style screening, and a staircase, escalators and elevators down which they will begin a trip that will lead them nearly 70 feet below street level, ending near an exposed part of the slurry wall. There will also be exit doors ushering them into the heart of the memorial plaza. On the second floor will be a 180-seat auditorium, a private room in which relatives of 9/11 victims may gather, an overlook from which visitors can take in a sweeping view of the memorial, and a small cafe. The third floor will be given over entirely to equipment and ventilation.
The museum is to open in 2012, a year after the memorial plaza is ready for visitors, on Sept. 11, 2011. Joseph C. Daniels, the president and chief executive of the memorial and museum, said Tuesday that the 10th-anniversary deadline could be met only if the steel and concrete of the transportation hub's mezzanine, directly below the plaza, was completed to street level by July 2010. Deputy Mayor Robert Lieber, who followed Mr. Daniels to the lectern, said the Bloomberg administration's "No. 1 priority is getting the memorial open on 9/11/11" -- suggesting that it might favor simplification of the hub design in order to make the memorial easier to build. Questions of timing and budget surround all the projects at ground zero. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is preparing a report to be delivered later this month that will assess the steps that need to be taken to bring the trade center redevelopment back in line. It is not yet known whether an admission fee will be charged at the museum, Mr. Daniels said. He estimated the annual maintenance and operating costs of the memorial and museum at $45 million to $50 million. "If we can get the money from other sources, we won't charge," Mr. Daniels said. About two million visitors are expected annually at the museum, said Alice M. Greenwald, the museum director. The building is designed to handle 1,500 people arriving an hour, she said. Snohetta's involvement at the site dates to 2004, when the firm was selected to design a museum complex that was to have included the Drawing Center in SoHo and a new institution known as the International Freedom Center. That plan dissolved in 2005. Snohetta then began working on a much smaller structure to serve as the museum's front door. The current plans call for the pavilion to be clad largely in metal panels: stainless steel, if the budget permits; aluminum if not. The design is intended, in part, to add visual interest, especially to the south facade of the building, which would otherwise be a blank wall punctuated by ventilating louvers. In the northwest corner will be an atrium, running the height of the building and enclosed in an angular framework of glass and steel. This will house the tridents, which are currently stored in a hangar at Kennedy International Airport, and allow them to be seen from within the museum and from around the plaza -- especially after dark, when they will be illuminated. Though no attempt was made to use the tridents to replicate the towers' facades, Ms. Greenwald suggested that they would ultimately serve a kindred function at the memorial. "They will become a kind of compass point," she said, "no matter where you are." |
