AROUND GROUND ZERO
A map for walking in Lower Manhattan after September 11

• Laura Kurgan, Concept and design (New York, NY). Project team: Laura Kurgan, Janette Kim, Bethia Liu, with Rivka Mazar, and Donald Shillingburg. Photography: Margaret Morton.
• Developed as a project of the New York - New Visions: Coalition for the Rebuilding of Lower Manhattan’s Temporary Memorials Committee Map issued in December 2001; second printing in February 2002
• Support from the following organizations and corporations is gratefully acknowledged: American Institute of Architects, New York Chapter; Con Edison; The New York Community Trust; The New York Foundation for the Arts; The Open Society Institute; Princeton University; TWBA/Chiat/Day; The Van Alen Institute; and two anonymous donors.
• For further information: www.aroundgroundzero.net. Web Design: Razorfish. Web Hosting: Logicworks

"Around Ground Zero" is a fold-out map of the area around the World Trade Center site known as Ground Zero. It is designed to orient visitors to the site and provide basic information about the site and recent events, in the interest of facilitating reflection and the work of remembrance. The map is distributed by volunteers around the city, especially around Ground Zero, for free.

The map serves at once as a practical guide to the site and as a memorial document. It addresses the multitude of people going to the site to bear witness, people who simply look or who seek to add something of their own to the many spontaneous memorials which have grown up there. The aim of the map is to help people make sense of what they are seeing, or, if that is asking too much, at least to measure their disorientation in the face of the unimaginable. The site around what was the World Trade Center is manifestly disorienting, for obvious reasons, and it should be in a sense, but the map addresses the unnecessary disorientation and allows visitors to begin to take stock of what has happened.

As a map, it can be used by anyone around the site, planning to visit, or simply interested but unable to get there. It describes the streets that allow viewing access and those that are inaccessible, the difference between the red zone (where the public is not allowed) and the green fence which marks the official boundary of the site. It presents a possible pathway around the site, a route which allows the multiple visual and political layers of the site to be exposed and entered. It identifies a number of memorial sites that have emerged, and itself encourages the work of memory and participation in the ongoing transformation of the site.

The map thus serves as a document of a place that is changing, of a line in the city that will soon disappear as the debris is removed. Presently, the site is a mass grave in the process of being disassembled and removed. This is a temporary condition that will soon disappear into a complex political debate over different proposals for rebuilding and memorializing. The map exposes this raw aspect of the site, the mass grave, as the one which should be memorialized. So the map, as well as suggesting a path of movement around the site, includes a series of photographs of all the temporary memorials contiguous to the path, and the green fences which have become home to innumerable flowers and letters and, of course, teddy bears.

In addition to the suggested pathway around the site, the map documents the exact location of the construction zone and activities in it; access routes into and out of it, with views of the site; an inventory of damaged buildings; sites of spontaneous memorials, including police stations and firehouses; and subway and bus information. The back of the map includes striking photography of the areas around Ground Zero by Margaret Morton and a high-resolution aerial photograph of the otherwise inaccessible zone from a NOAA aircraft, as well as historical information designed to facilitate public participation in discussions of the future of the area.

The map grew out of discussions in a subcommittee of New York New Visions, a group of architects and designers who have been meeting informally over the past six months to imagine responses on an urban scale to the events of September 11th. This is a project of the Temporary Memorials Committee, a group primarily aimed at proposing guidelines and ideas for temporary memorials for the site.

Some of us felt that the need was much more pressing than the timing of proposals for permanent built memorials would allow. The map responds to the fact that the area around Ground Zero has already become a destination for large groups of visitors. (Any visitor today will see many others wandering lost around the site, asking policeman where they are allowed to walk, or seeking to orient themselves by crowding around small xeroxed copies of FEMA maps, posted on walls for construction workers.) My team, which includes the award-winning photo-documentarian Morton, spent many hours around the site documenting it and then producing the map, and we continue to do so. We have enlisted the help of an urbanist with expertise in popular memorials, and worked with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, FEMA and Mitre Corporation which have supplied stunning aerial views of the site.

The first map had a run of 50,000 copies the bulk of which have been distributed. 100,000 copies of the second map are currently being printed and will begin distribution on March 11th.

Laura Kurgan 03/06/02

To learn more about New York New Visions, visit their website at nynv.aiga.org.