A design featuring two reflecting pools where the World Trade Center towers once stood was chosen as a memorial to the victims of the September 11th, 2001 attacks, US officials said last night.
The design called "Reflecting Absence" was selected from eight finalists by a 13-member jury after a marathon meeting on Monday, said a spokeswoman for the Lower Manhattan Development, which is overseeing rebuilding the devastated site.
The design by architect Mr Michael Arad, as originally submitted, featured a pair of pools below street level, an open plaza of cobblestones and randomly arranged pine trees.
The names of the 2,752 people who died in New York in the attacks as well as the six people who died in the 1993 bombing of the Trade Center would be engraved on stone surrounding the pools.
In the winning design, the names could be listed in no particular order to reflect the haphazard brutality of the deaths, or various groups of people who knew each other could be listed together.
"In its powerful, yet simple articulation of the footprints of the Twin Towers, 'Reflecting Absence' has made the gaping voids left by the towers' destruction the primary symbol of loss," said jury chairman Mr Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie and former president of Brown University.
"While these voids still remain empty and inconsolable, the surrounding plaza's design has evolved to include teeming groves of trees, traditional affirmations of life and rebirth," he said.
"The result is a memorial that expresses both the incalculable loss of life and its regeneration."
The LMDC said changes to the original design will be unveiled next week.