By Real Estate NJ
The American Institute of Architects’ New Jersey chapter has recognized Davis Brody Bond Architects and Planners for its design of the National September 11 Memorial Museum at the World Trade Center in New York City, the association announced.
The firm, which is based in Manhattan, was given an Honor Award in the Built Open category.
“Davis Brody Bond Architects and Planners was given the unique opportunity to put their innovative imprint on what is without question among the most important museums to be constructed in recent memory,” Justin Mihalik, president of AIA New Jersey, said in a prepared statement. “With their inspired design, they will enhance the experience of countless visitors trying to reconnect with and comprehend the tragedies of September 11.”
Descending nearly 70 feet into the ground at the World Trade Center site, the museum was designed to be the global focal point for presenting and preserving the history and memories of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, AIA said in a news release. The subterranean museum comprises 110,000 square feet of publically accessible space and was designed to convey the enormity of the events it memorializes.
Beneath a ground-level plaza begins a gently descending procession that guides visitors from the plaza to the bedrock level, where the cut columns of the World Trade Center towers still remain. The gradual descent provides time for visitors to reconnect with the site, as its iconic features are progressively disclosed.
The passage is lined with a variety of artifacts as well as remains of the tower. Altogether, those features are meant to provide a link between the act of memorializing the victims of the attack and the provision of a narrative historical account of the event.
“In one hundred years from now, no one will be alive who remembers 9/11,” said Steven M. Davis, FAIA. partner of Davis Brody Bond Architects and Planners. “The story has to tell itself.”
