Watching the World Trade Center rebuilding process, you keep repeating this mantra to yourself: You can't please everyone. Nowhere is this more evident than in the reaction to the World Trade Center memorial.

After months -- well, weeks -- of deliberation by a 13-member jury, Michael Arad and Peter Walker's "Reflecting Absence" was chosen as the design. Among rebuilding-watchers, it was seen as something of a dark horse. The smart money was on "Passages of Light," with its "cloud" covering the site -- a bizarre construction of translucent tubes which the designers, without so much as a blink, described as a "band-aid." To the plebeians among us, it was just plain ugly, but it was the sort of "daring" statement the art intelligentsia loves.

If that didn't win, you had to figure the jury, which included a Deputy Mayor and a former flack for Governor Pataki among its ranks, would go for "Suspending Memory," with the names of all the victims (and some miscellaneous biographical details) inscribed on gravestone-looking pillars. Of course, that design also called for filling the entire memorial space with water -- surely the wrong message to send. After all, a key element of Daniel Libeskind's master site plan is the remnant of the slurry wall, which was built to keep the Hudson out, not to hold God's own swimming pool.

So you then had to figure the jury would get really pedestrian and pick "Dual Memory," which would project each victim's face onto an individual glass screen. This reminded me of what they flash on movie screens before the coming attractions start. Perhaps they could also project "Fun Facts about 9/11" while they were at it. Or, to raise the estimated $300 million the memorial will cost, "This Space for Rent."

But the jury picked "Reflecting Absence." Reportedly, this was due to Maya Lin's influence on her fellow jurors. No surprise. "Reflecting Absence" is nearly as simple, conceptually, as Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial, but not as beautiful. It turns the footprints of the original Twin Towers into two cascading pools of water, which you can view from both street level and from an underground vault. The names of the victims (both of 9/11 and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing) would be inscribed on the pools in random order. As a compromise for police officers and firefighters who wanted special recognition, the names of rescue workers would have an insignia next to them. Under one footprint would be a museum of Trade Center "artifacts" -- a crushed fire truck, for instance, or maybe the destroyed section of the Towers' facade we saw in a million photographs. Under the other footprint would be the unidentified victims' remains.

Despite these morbid elements, I admit to being pleasantly surprised by the choice. Given the nearly impossible guidelines for the designers, I would submit that this is the best design we can hope for, and the best among the eight "finalist" designs. When I saw the eight unveiled, I remember thinking: "That one doesn't have a chance in hell." I'm glad it did. And it's not unattractive, either.

For once, I'm not in the minority. The New York Times and the Daily News praised "Reflecting Absence." The New York Post, predictably, led the charge against: "It still stinks," the paper sniffed. "New York has enough parks," the editorial said, referring to the grove of trees added to Michael Arad's original design by landscape architect Peter Walker. "The anger unleashed by the destruction of the towers ... energized America's entirely appropriate military response to the attacks. At Ground Zero, [New York] needs a large measure of righteous bellicosity."

On the other hand, there were those who thought the design was too intrusive. Victims' family members, or an organization claiming to represent many of them, gave some cautious praise to "Reflecting Absence," but they still would have preferred that nothing -- nothing -- be built at Ground Zero. "From bedrock to infinity" has been their rallying cry.

Let me attempt to inject a note of reality into this discussion. There are obvious flaws in "Reflecting Absence." I'd like to see how those curtains of water hold up in the sub-freezing weather we've been having. I'd like to know who will remove all the coins people will surely throw in the two pools. And I'd hate to be the one to explain to someone's wife or husband or son or daughter that they'll have to look at every single name on both pools to find the name of the person they loved and lost. (Though as Mayor Bloomberg pointed out, that's the point: if you want to look at one name, you have to look at them all.)

But these are problems that can be solved. And "Reflecting Absence" is nothing if not an attempt at a solution to a very, very complex problem. The memorial does not belong exclusively to victims' families, or firefighters, or police, or politicians, or critics of architecture. It belongs to the people who live near Ground Zero and the people who will work there. It belongs to those of us alive today and those who will come to the memorial a hundred years from now.

The people who will work in the Freedom Tower and the other offices surrounding the memorial will not want the same kind of windswept plaza the original Trade Center had. Hence the trees: not only beautiful, but a windbreak as well. And the trees help shield the memorial pools from the view of the residents who have to look down on them. As Mayor Bloomberg also pointed out -- and was roundly criticized for doing so -- no one wants to live next to a cemetery. (When he presented the design, Arad referred to the street-level park as a "cemetery," then corrected himself and called it a "sacred grove.")

But ultimately, whether it's somber or bellicose, garish or subdued, the World Trade Center memorial has only the meaning we will give it. Veterans' groups hated Maya Lin's masterpiece when it was first built and forced her to add a conventional statue near the black tombstone we all know and revere today. We don't know what the World Trade Center memorial will mean, in the long view. It will mean something, probably something no one ever intended. (As the Post pointed out -- correctly, for a change -- the terror war is not over, and no one yet knows the outcome.) We will take from it what we will take from it. Just build it. We will come.

Jay Ross is a writer and observer of the WTC rebuilding process. He is based out of New York City.

View "Reflecting Absence" design

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