A trip through the World Trade Center memorial will begin with a forest of 300 oak trees that surround a pair of 200-square-foot open voids and a grassy expanse that can hold 10,000 people. It will end 70 feet below ground, at the sheared steel tower footings and the massive concrete slurry wall.

		In between, visitors can pause at a pair of pools at the bottom of the voids, read the names of those who died etched on a wall behind a curtain of running water, and then move into a quiet room of contemplation where unidentified remains will be kept. Nearly one year after winning the memorial competition, Michael Arad, and the other members of the design team, architects Peter Walker and Max Bond, unveiled the schematic design for "Reflecting Absence." "We were guided by a sense of mission to convey the enormous scale of the tragedy, its brutal impact on our lives and the collective response that we all had," Arad said at the Dec. 16 presentation at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park City.
Standing alongside models of the memorial, Arad described how he envisions a visitor's first encounter with the names and the voids. "I believe this moment will be an incredible emotional moment of sorrow and comprehension. For a split second, people standing here will understand the vast scale of the attack." For the three architects, the past year has been spent figuring out the many complex logistical issues-how visitors will enter and move around the space, where the ramps will go, how to preserve and integrate the Trade Center's remnants, what kinds of trees will thrive on the site, and how to build a street- level plaza with no more than a few steps and with ramps for wheelchairs and strollers. Many details, both physical and emotional, remain to be worked out, such as how the names will be listed and if the family room will also display the faces of those who died. And the design team will soon head to Toronto to conduct tests of how water can keep running throughout a frigid winter. Hundreds of oak trees with trunks a few inches in diameter will be selected from nurseries in the coming months, said Peter Walker, a landscape architect. By next April they will be moved to a spot somewhere in the metropolitan area where they will be kept for three years before being transplanted onto the site. Walker expects them to be 40 feet tall by the Sept. 11, 2009 memorial opening. Monica Iken, a spokeswoman for victims' family members, whose husband died in the attacks, said she was happy with the design but was worried about noise and traffic from the surrounding buildings and streets. "There's no buffer between the Freedom Tower and the memorial except a street and two rows of trees," Iken said. The designers noted that the plaza would not be a place for playing. "It will have a more quiet more contemplative mood to it than other parks." said Arad. "It will exist between the memorial and everyday life."