ABSTRACT

CONVINCED THAT IT WAS FAR TOO EARLY TO BEGIN TO THINK ABOUT WHAT ACTIVITIES SHOULD RETURN TO GROUND ZERO, OUR EARLY STUDIES LOOKED BEYOND THE SITE. This was not simply a question of protecting a space of mourning but of answering the array of aspirations that arose in the aftermath of the tragedy—for office and commercial space, for transit improvements, for housing, for civic institutions, for green space, and, above all for a suitable memorial to September 11. These not simply exceeded the bearing capacity of those fraught fourteen acres, they affronted the dead, still entombed there.