As the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks approaches, Michael Arad, a partner at Handel Architects and the architect of the National September 11 Memorial, is proud of the site's design.
"This project is incredibly meaningful to me personally and to New York, and America," he said. "I feel very fortunate to be able to contribute to it in some ways."
A competition, which Arad won, was held to determine the designer of the site. He spent eight years working on the site, which opened on the 10th anniversary, Sept. 11, 2011. He even started sketching possible designs for a memorial weeks after the attacks took place.
The design features two waterfalls in the footprints of where the two towers had stood. Along the perimeters of the falls, the names of those who died -- nearly 3,000 -- are engraved.
One of the aspects of the memorial's design that Arad is most proud of is how these names are arranged.
"We reached out to the families and [asked if there were] names of other people who perished that day that [they] would like to see next to the name of the person [they] lost," Arad added. Arad said he received over 1,200 name arrangement requests. Family members of victims were involved in the design process of the memorial.
Fifteen years after the attacks, Arad is impressed with the rebirth of New York's Lower Manhattan.
"To see how this neighborhood--not just the site--but all of lower Manhattan--has changed so much in the last 15 years, I think we have so much to be proud of," Arad said. "There are so many new buildings. It was a complicated and complex process fraught with so much emotion."
