My feelings about the World Trade Center Memorial Pools

source: Foster and Partners

Note: This post doesn't endorse any position in favor or against the American people. I'm just talking about the architecture.


The World Trade Center Memorial consists of two huge pools built within the footprints of the Twin Towers with the largest man-made waterfalls in the country cascading down their sides. 

Michael Arad, the architect of the Memorial Pools said: “The design strives to make visible what is absent. The primary responsibility we have is to those we lost that day.” It’s the architecture of absence.

source:Google Images

I was looking at the images of those pools and the feeling is really of absence. Something is missing. The pools should be full, that’s the purpose of pools, but they’re not. The water keeps disappearing. It gives the feeling of that something is going away, like the lives of those 3 thousand people, victims of the attack. To reinforce that idea, the names of the nearly 3,000 individuals who were killed in the September 11 attacks in New York City, and at the Pentagon, and the February 1993 World Trade Center bombing are inscribed in bronze on the edges of the Memorial Pools. 

Victims names inscribed insous bronze on the edges

And completing that sensation of absence, you have the constant waterfalls reminding the non-stop tears of the survivors who miss their relatives.


It’s amazing that the twin pools are perfect footprints of the Twin Towers.  The idea of footprint is exactly absence. When we see a footprint, we know that something or somebody was there, but it’s not anymore.         

source:Google Images

Footprints are always something left behind. 

I imagine that looking at the Twin Memorial Pools must be a very strong feeling to those who witnessed the September 11 terrorist attack and lost relatives and friends. 


Actually, all the architecture was projected based on the concept of remembering the event and the victims. Observe the photo below. Can you see? The orientation of the tower is a way of acknowledge (what in Portuguese we say “reconhecimento”) of the void left by the Twin Towers.

It looks like the new tower is looking at the place of the old ones. The position of the new tower also allows the entrance of light, in a way that the new tower doesn’t project permanent shadow on the memorial.

I’ve loved the architecture. I’ve found it intelligent, creative and touching. 

Related videos:

see also:

http://online.wsj.com/video/911-memorial-opens/C170FA3C-48BC-44C6-A3D4-0836EC049F70.html

Vocabulary:

man-made (adjective): artificial rather than natural

to witness (verb): to see something happen, for example a crime or an accident.


by Vivian Barone
Barone English's Pedagogical Coordinator

African girl is the first black kid with aging disease

by Waldirene Biernath

image source : Notícias UOL

Ontlametse Phalatse is the first black child diagnosed with progeria, a rare and fatal genetic condition that accelerates the aging process, according to the Progeria Research Foundation. Nobody knows how many kids in the world have it. In a two-year campaign to identify them, the Progeria Research Foundation says the number of children diagnosed around the world has soared from 48 to 80 on five continents.

The small and delicate 12 year old girl calls herself "the first lady" and dreams of the future. "I call myself a first lady because I'm the first black child with this disease ... Which other black child do you know with this disease?" she asked.

The foundation's executive director, Audrey Gordon, says there are several holes on the map where they have found children living with progeria. "We know that there are children (with progeria) in Africa, in China and Russia, but we just can't seem to get to them," she said.

Children with progeria look remarkably similar, despite different ethnic backgrounds: small and bald with oversized heads, eyes that bulge a bit, gnarled hands. They suffer from thinning skin which has a network of blue veins showing on the heads of white children.

Ontlametse and her mother

Ontlametse's mother, Bellon Phalatse, says her baby was born looking normal but that she realized early on that something was wrong. The baby suffered constant rashes and by the time she was 3 months old Phalatse thought she had a skin disease. 

Before Ontlametse celebrated her first birthday "her hair was falling, her nails weren't normal, the skin problems, we were going up and down to the doctors." Bellon still tells that as the child aged prematurely, her father abandoned the family when Ontlametse was 3 years old.

Despite her frequent illnesses, Ontlametse enrolled in school at 6 and proved a bright pupil. But she was often scorned by classmates, teachers and others who thought she was so small and skinny because she had AIDS. South Africa has the highest number of people living with AIDS of any country but the disease still carries a terrible social stigma.

Each school holiday, Ontlametse and her mom fly to the United States, where she participates in research funded by the Progeria Research Foundation at Children's Hospital Boston. It gives her access to cutting edge drugs that are not yet commercially available.

Children with progeria die almost exclusively from heart disease between the ages of 8 and 21, commonly suffering high blood pressure, strokes, angina, enlarged heart and heart failure.

In 2003, the foundation was instrumental in the discovery of the progeria gene. Now they hope it can help provide answers about the ordinary aging process and cardiovascular disease.

Vocabulary:

soared (noun): the act of rising upward into the air; (to) soar (verb): go or move upward "The stock market soared after the cease-fire was announced";

backgrounds (noun): the general situation in which something happens;

remarkably (adverb): in a way that is unusual and surprises or impresses you;

bald (adjective): with little or no hair on your head;

oversized (adjective): much larger than usual;

bulge (noun): a shape that curves outward on the surface of something, often made by something under it or inside it;

gnarled (adjective): old and twisted and covered in lines;

scorned (adjective):  treated with contempt;

cutting edge (noun):  the position of greatest advancement; the leading position in any movement or field.

Ontlametse Phalatse’s Photos:

http://noticias.uol.com.br/album/110908_envelhecimentoprecoce_album.jhtm

Source:

http://noticias.uol.com.br/ultimas-noticias/internacional/2011/09/08/menina-de-12-anos-e-a-primeira-negra-a-ser-diagnosticada-com-doenca-que-acelera-o-envelhecimento.jhtm

http://www.whatsonsanya.com/news-17945-s-african-girl-ontlametse-phalatse-12-is-first-black-kid-with-aging-disease.html