The inspiration for this memorial draws on Mother Emanuel AME Church as a historic place and as a congregation, throughout its 200-year history, it has endured slavery, discrimination and racism. When worship and assembly were banned, the church resisted and provided a place of fellowship and sanctuary. The Emanuel Nine tragedy marks another dark moment for the church, though faith helped to heal and bring light into the darkness.

Michael Arad

Categorized in : U.S.

You can just never desist. You have to always push back, whatever the pressures put on you.

Michael Arad

pressure

As architects we are often involved in the concrete-steel-and-glass aspect of it, but cities are social structures, and to be involved in imagining the future of cities and the type of relationships and the types of places that we're making is something that intrigues me very much.

Michael Arad

imagining-the-future glasses cities

I had a dual role: designer and advocate.

Michael Arad

designer roles

For two years nobody talked about anything other than the name arrangement. There was no fund-raising and no progress being made on construction and design.

Michael Arad

names two years

I really appreciate artists of the 20th century, and I can see a lot of their influence on my work, but to suggest that my design only fits within an 'ism' kind of bothers me.

Michael Arad

appreciate design artist

I love New York, but I'd felt like an outsider here.

Michael Arad

outsiders i-love-new-york new-york

I believe that people are fundamentally are decent. And, yes, you will have people that sometimes will misbehave.

Michael Arad

sometimes believe people

When I was in the Army, the unit I served in, you could never stop. It was a volunteer unit, and there was a fairly high rate of attrition. The people who stayed through are the people who were either great at it or the people who just didn't know how to stop. And I fell into that second category.

Michael Arad

volunteer army people

PERFORMING TRIBUTE 9/11 shows the heroism of people who have chosen to respond to devastation and hatred with quiet determination and a belief that they can and will make the world a better place.

Michael Arad

hatred determination people

New York was a place I wanted to live and work all along. If I wasn't going to live in Israel, I had to live in New York.

Michael Arad

israel new-york wanted

It sounds really over the top to say you're responsible for the city of New York, but I do feel responsibility to the city of New York, to this country, to people everywhere. So many people were affected by the events of September 11, and I feel this is one of the ways that that event will be understood and defined.

Michael Arad

responsibility new-york country

I'm a little more measured. That sense of urgency I thought accompanied things - it can take a little longer. You have to take the long view.

Michael Arad

views littles long

I think my desire to imagine a future for this site came out of trying to come to terms with the emotions that day aroused.

Michael Arad

desire trying thinking

I pushed the process forward by saying, 'We should do this, this, and this right now. Please find the budget for me to find a structural engineer, a mechanical engineer, a civil engineer, so we can do the preliminary work.

Michael Arad

please process should

I hope for the experience of people standing together, turning their backs to the city and facing this, and hearing the leaves rustle. Well, maybe it won't be as bucolic as at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, but I know you will feel removed from the city.

Michael Arad

navy cities people

I built a series of supporters that had my back. I never abused that trust. You can't cry wolf. You have to solve most problems yourself.

Michael Arad

solve cry problem

How do you design it so that people can form a space of their own, and feel quiet and contemplative?

Michael Arad

design space people

There are bound to be differences in any artistic collaboration with landscape elements, or theater, of lighting elements.

Michael Arad

collaboration elements differences

I have no choice but to fight them every step of the way. I can't tell you how many other stupid ideas have been proposed over the last two years.

Michael Arad

step fight you stupid

It was really a magical moment, to see this idea that's in your head.

Michael Arad

head your see moment