Design Plan

Untitled foam core submission board designed for the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition in 2003. This design plan features a conceptual rendering of a memorial site landscaped by crab-apple and cherry trees. It includes diagrams of the distinctive copper planters intended to hold the trees and a “House of Contemplation” within the site. 

The descriptive text on the board reads:
A flowing field of copper planters: crab-apple trees for the victims; cherry trees for the fallen rescuers. A spiraling path of glass, water, and light. A weeping bronze tree inside a House of Contemplation.

The trees form an enclosure, their branches interlocking, growing into a canopy. The ground below becomes sacred, light blocked by growth. Illumination provided by light reflecting off of a stream of water under glass in the centre of the path on which one walks in and out of the spiral. One enters the path of light and water by descending the Liberty Street ramp.

There is one planter growing a single tree for each of the fallen from the terrorist attacks. Each is a machine for growth engraved with a single name. Each leaning one degree from its neighbor from 90 to 45 and than [sic] back to 90 degrees. Towers bending but not falling: trees growing in difficult situations but held upright by holding each other, branches interlocking: the victims and the rescuers holding each other aloft.

At the centre of the spiral path, the House of Contemplation. The water emerging from below ground as it enters to flow around an island of sand on which stands a single bronze tree weeping water from its branches. In this softly lit room around this weeping tree are seats for contemplation. Drops of water falling like tears: marking the sand.

In this House the remains of the unidentified victims are entombed.

On the Liberty Street Wall text: quotations about freedom and democracy: copper letters cut from the same plate as the planters.

The footprints of the original Towers will be marked by a shift in pavers cutting into and across the spiral path of trees, water, and light.

Eldon Garnet is a native of Toronto, Canada, where he received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto and a master’s degree from York University. He specializes in photo-based artwork and contemporary sculpture, some of which have been exhibited in European and North American cities like San Francisco, New York, Paris, and Amsterdam. Public memorial sculptures credited to Garnet include the Memorial to Commemorate Chinese Railroad Workers (1989), located in Canada near the Toronto Railway Museum, and another in Toronto titled Artifacts of Memory (2015). Garnet was also one of six finalists who submitted proposals for the War of 1812 monument intended for Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada, opting for a design that emphasized peace and memorialized the losses of both European colonists and First Nations peoples in the conflict. In addition to his ventures as an artist, Garnet also worked as publisher and editor of Impulse, an internationally circulated art and fashion magazine, from 1975 to 1990. He presently serves as a professor of contemporary art, design and new media at the Ontario College of Art and Design University.