A Memorial Vision In Light

By Jonathan Kivell

As the streets of Manhattan bustle with shoppers and tourists ogling the holiday windows and the massive tree, the future of the World Trade Center (WTC) site remains on the drawing boards and in the imaginations of architects who are constructing what future holiday visitors will stop to see.

Though he’s not in the mix of the chosen few working to build that future plan, one Queens-born architect has a vision he wishes someone would allow in the mix.

Ed McGinnis, a Manhattan-based architect whose roots are in Middle Village , wants to see “diamonds take flight” between Church and West Streets in lower Manhattan .

McGinnis’ design features one large building — which will be approximately 1,000 feet tall — connected to three adjacent shorter buildings, all built along Church Street . 

The four buildings are joined by short towers that are split, so there’s a bottom part on the ground and an upper part attached to the large central building. The upper sections are suspended approximately three hundred feet above ground. 

“My design is a building wrapped around two memorial sunbeams,” said McGinnis, whose firm designs small office buildings, condominiums, and renovations for City firehouses. 

McGinnis took the angularity of the sun into account to maximize the amount of light passing through the building’s two “windows,” or gaps in the small towers  His plan is for beams of sunlight to shine through each respective window at 8:46 and 9:03 a.m. on every Sept. 11 to commemorate the times when the planes hit each Tower.

McGinnis labeled the design, “The Flight of Diamonds,” because of the play of sunlight into two pools of water, placed in the “footprints” of the original WTC Towers .

Ed McGinnis’ plan for the World Trade Center site includes two pools where the Towers once stood, that will be lit by two sunbeams each year on Sept. 11. Photo Courtesy of Ed McGinnis

While experimenting with a pyramid-shaped part of a meat tenderizer, McGinnis found that he could create a moving light pattern, “similar to a watching a flight of birds.” 

McGinnis’ plan calls for the pools to have floors covered with these pyramids, which will refract sunlight coming through the “windows” back upon the building.  For the rest of the 16-acre site plan, McGinnis has designed a park, community center, and extension of Greenwich Street to a transportation center, which will be fronted by three spires, each several hundred feet tall, and an atrium.

A few weeks after the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) first published the six plans it received for site designs in July, McGinnis went to West Street , and thought for a while about what could stand there. 

McGinnis said that while watching the site, he realized how much direct sunlight it collects during the day. “This design is a reminisence of the Towers,” said McGinnis, who teaches master’s classes at NYU in real estate development.  “I think that this is architecture of meaning.  It’s for the people.”

He is now faced with the difficult task of convincing LMDC that his design should become reality. 

The LMDC is currently working with six teams of architects in a site study that will result in three designs for the WTC space.  McGinnis’ plan is to have members of the architecture teams check out his drawings, and introduce the building wrapped around two light beams to the LMDC. 

“For now, I’m trying to get this around to the architects involved in the project,” McGinnis said.  “In July, the designs created were all memorials, either a park or promenade.  I believe we need another icon of capitalism, so I created one giant building.”

The Interactive Memorial
The Flight Of The Diamonds

The following are excerpts from architect Ed McGinnis’ proposal for rebuilding the World Trade Center site:

Architecture is the human realm – it is the cultural, historical and aesthetic expression of a society. The World Trade Center site must have an office building that will again be an icon of New York City , the Port Authority of NY and NJ and the United States of America ; and be symbolic of the power and accomplishments of our society.

The memorial portion of the design couples the hallowed footprints of the Twin Towers with openings in the new office building. The building extends the entire length of the site but has strategically located openings through which two enormous sunbeams pass through onto two pools of water with fountains. The openings are precisely located, utilizing altitude and azimuth solar angles for every Sept. 11 at 8:46 a.m. and 9:03 a.m.

The pools have fountains of “dandelion” sprays, which are turned off every day just before the times the Twin Towers were attacked and stay off until 10:28 when the last Tower collapsed. During this period on Sept. 11, the sun passes over the grandstands and onto the pools of water and 2,801 aluminum monuments, one for every victim, reflect back sunbeams to the grandstands. The diamond shaped faces of the monuments, with initials of all the lost souls, are cast from the aluminum from the fallen Towers, each about four foot tall, and are buffed and focused to distributed reflected light across the entire grandstands.

As the sun sweeps across the morning sky, spectators will experience all the diamond monuments flash back light in unison, brought briefly to life for about 15 minutes, thus creating an event not unlike large flocks of birds taking flight; hence, “The Flight of the Diamonds.”

Coin operated telephoto cameras are positioned at the west edge of the memorial site, where one can zoom in to computer located portraits of all the victims etched onto unpolished stainless steel panels above the grandstands. The panels are lit perpetually via lights in the soffits from the overhanging building above. Therefore, visitors can create a personalized photo of a victim, similar to the paper/pencil rubbings done on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall.

The designs honor the hallowed footprints of the Twin Towers with pools within a park raised above the street level to allow vehicle circulation without the enormous costs of lowering West Street . A crosswalk at West Street and walkways from the World Financial Center bridges over Greenwich Street to a promenade deck and retail frontage at the office building and the Transportation Center .

Greenwich Street is continued downtown, traffic direction to be determined, with drop-offs for the Transportation center at the center of the Office Building and as an entry to the Park.

The office building pays homage to the original Twin Towers , having four shafts of similar proportions but the tallest only 84 stories.

The girth of the building, the entire length of the WTC site, is identifiable to the entire world, as were the soaring heights of the Twin Towers . The façade of the shafts recreate the vertical expression of the original Towers, which contrast with the horizontal direction of the connecting masses with linear windows of blue tinted glass over granite spandrels.

The office building houses a WTC Museum within both grandstands connected by a corridor lined with retail shops.

The office building integrates an identifiable icon for the Transportation Center , which has its main floor at street level. Pedestrian passageways and public spaces, along with subway and rail connections, are to be determined. The center vertical facetted spires at the building’s center soar to the heavens, not unlike the towers of Gothic cathedrals, and commemorate the three uniformed services that lost heroes on Sept. 11. They have diamond shaped tips perpetually lit in red, white and blue and create an identity for the Transportation Center .

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