In the Abstract
by Noam Lupu

Ever since Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial, minimalism has been the catchword of American memorials. Now, after the eight finalists and then the winning design by Michael Arad for the World Trade Center memorial have been unveiled, minimalism also, paradoxically, has become the critique. While Lin's minimalism is now universally praised, few observers seem to appreciate Arad's.

Arad's design calls for two "inverse" reflecting pools at the footprints of the absent towers; the water that flows into the pool emphasizes the void, metaphorically re-enacting the towers' awesome collapse. The low walls surrounding the pools will bear the names of the victims of Sept. 11, 2001 and of the 1993 bombing. Visitors can also descend a ramp alongside each pool to an underground memorial center, passing the "slurry wall" that preserved the foundations of the towers.

The memorial is abstract; there are no representations of towers or airplanes or American flags. And this is as it should be. A representational memorial — one that uses clearly definable symbols to tell a specific and neatly packaged story — has no place at Ground Zero. We have to recognize that there is no way to accurately represent the attacks and what they meant to each of the victims, their families, New York City, the country or the world. This is, of course, not to say that the events of Sept. 11, 2001 are unique in their "irrepresentability." No event so profound and so tragic (and there have, unfortunately, been many others) with such a multiplicity of interpretations, can ever be faithfully represented without resort to abstraction. Any representational memorial, whether it be a gnarled fire truck or a series of images of the victims, would inevitably exclude some part of those still-inexplicable events.

Abstraction allows for a memorial that, instead of having to pick and choose which story to tell, provides a powerful space of reflection. An abstract memorial is not totalizing: It does not pick a single story to tell, but shares a multiplicity of experiences. Arad's design does not tell us how to remember the event, but it does tell of the void left behind in its wake.

Still, critics argue that Arad's abstract memorial is soothing, not thought-provoking. And to a certain extent they may prove to be right; the design does have an element of what Maureen Dowd sardonically called "architectural Musak." But it is simply not true, as Jerry Saltz complained in the Village Voice, that Arad's design "sanitize[s] and shrink-wrap[s] our emotions in a fanatically tidy visual security blanket."

The same criticism, it should be remembered, was leveled against Lin's design. In 1982, Tom Wolfe penned a vitriolic attack on the Vietnam memorial in the Washington Post condemning the design's minimalism as "banal, comprised solely of straight lines and flat planes." But in the context of the Washington Mall, Lin's memorial is actually quite jarring. As you walk along the wall, you descend into the landscape and watch the names of fallen soldiers grow exponentially. In the context of the Capitol, the Smithsonian campus and the towering Washington Monument, the effect is potent. It is the starkness, the very minimalism of the Vietnam Wall in the context of the grandiose Mall that makes it so powerful.

In architecture, context matters. Sure Arad's design seems calming in the abstract, as a 2-foot-by-2-foot model made of foam board. But amidst the bustle of Lower Manhattan — with subway cars rumbling below, cars honking and the frequent blare of police sirens — Arad's memorial will be a poignant oasis. Like the starkness of a white canvas, the memorial will be jarring precisely because it is an understatement in the heart of a city of exuberance and energy. It will be a space eerily set apart, both a busy public square and a ground charged with tragedy.

We should not judge the plan outside the context for which it is intended. Whatever the virtues or flaws of the design in theory, the only question that matters is, what will the memorial achieve in practice at Ground Zero? This is no simple task, and the 13-member jury charged with evaluating 5,201 submissions had an unenviable task. But let's not dismiss Arad's design — and minimalism as a whole — because, in a vacuum, it seems too abstract or too calming. Once built at Ground Zero, Arad's memorial will be quite powerful.