National September 11th Memorial & Museum

2014
Thinc Design
New York, NY

110,000 GSF

Exhibitions

The National September 11th Memorial & Museum remembers and honors those lost on September 11, 2001 and February 26, 1993 at the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan.

The museum's exhibition space is located within the archaeological heart of the World Trade Center site. Visitors enter the exhibition along a corridor displaying the portraits of the nearly 3,000 victims, creating a wall of faces to demonstrate the scale of human loss. Within the architecture of the corridor, RDG detailed a perimeter cove in which two rows of adjustable fixtures are concealed. From these two rows, hundreds of fixtures are individually aimed at the portraits creating an even wash of light on each remembrance.

Self-illuminated interactive tables allow visitors to delve into the lives of each victim while physical artifacts scattered throughout the space are lit from a track system above. At the exhibition’s center lies a section of the original building slab exposed through a glass floor. Within the structure of the glass floor, RDG designed a fiber optic system to highlight the texture and raw remains of the slab. Surrounding the slab, new walls create an internal chamber used to present profiles of individual victims in a dignified sequence through photographs, biographical information and audio recordings. Keeping with the somber nature of the exhibition, soft light spills from a cove at the top of the chamber walls providing ambient lighting, allowing the slab and personal stories to occupy the space.