Slurry Wall Memorial

Comments from San on 10-27-2011: 

“I recently found this article on Architect Daniel Libeskind as one of seven finalists whose design was chosen in the completion to rebuild at Ground Zero.   I never knew about Daniels experience before today.  It is amazing to me to find out how he connected with the slurry wall at ground zero and how it influenced his art design, as it did mine.  As an Artist of great honor to of been chosen to work on these slurry wall sculpture, I have had similar experiences   In my daily routine before I would start working on it, I would touch the concrete first, feeling its life and temperature, emitting an energy like no other thing I have ever experienced.”

WHAT REMAINS WHEN EVERYTHING ELSE FALLS DOWN?

Unlike the other finalists in the competition, Libeskind went down into the crater created after 9-11 in that enormous sixteen acre pit where the World Trade Center once stood majestically.  He encountered the slurry wall, a seven story dam which had been built underground at the World Trade Center site to hold back the Hudson River.  The slurry wall is integral to Libeskind’s proposal, which includes part of the exposed slurry wall incorporated into the memorial garden below ground.

Here are some accounts of Libeskind’s experience with the slurry wall.

“When I was one of the competing architects I was given a chance -- and took it -- to go with the Port Authority. They said "Does anybody want to go down to the pit?" All the architects said, "No, we can see it," but I told them I wanted to go down. Really, it changed my view of the world. As I descended that 75-foot (22-meter) descent, I understood what happened. As I got closer to where people died, I understood this was sacred ground. I touched that wall, the slurry wall, that huge foundation. I suddenly realized that this was not just about the past; this was about the future.”

Visiting the site, Libeskind has said he was struck by the dramatic aura of the great slurry wall, an engineering wonder originally designed to hold back the Hudson River that survived the trauma of the destruction.  Libeskind sees the buildings’ foundation standing “as the Constitution itself asserting the durability of Democracy and the value of individual life.”

Libeskind says that at the moment his pressed to the cold, damp slurry wall, he heard “Take it and read it.  Take it and read it.”  For Libeskind, it was a call to “read” the slurry wall, “a revelatory experience” he says, and a metaphor for “what remains when everything else falls down”