Michael Arad
Michael Arad
Michael Arad is an Israeli-American architect who is best known for being the designer of the World Trade Center Memorial. He won the competition to design the memorial in 2004...
NationalityIsraeli
ProfessionArchitect
CountryIsrael
views long littles
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.
country new-york responsibility
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.
new-york israel wanted
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.
determination people hatred
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.
army volunteer 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.
believe people sometimes
I believe that people are fundamentally are decent. And, yes, you will have people that sometimes will misbehave.
new-york outsiders i-love-new-york
I love New York, but I'd felt like an outsider here.
artist appreciate design
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.
years names two
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.
glasses cities imagining-the-future
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.
pressure
You can just never desist. You have to always push back, whatever the pressures put on you.