Family's Yard Hosts WTC Memorial Mock-Up

Family's yard hosts WTC memorial mock-up

The backyard of a family in Richmond Hill, Ont., north of Toronto, is hosting a scale model of the controversial World Trade Center memorial.
Dan Euser's family is playing host to the 10-metre high, 12-metre wide, $175,000 US mock-up for professional reasons.
His firm, Dan Euser Waterarchitecture, is a consultant to the main design team for the project. Some of his other work includes Toronto's Dundas Square and fountains for former U.S. President Bill Clinton's presidential library in Little Rock, Arkansas.
"We have to do this full size. This is really unique and because it's the Trade Center, I said, 'OK, over in the backyard'," Euser told CTV News.
Maureen Baznicki appeared overwhelmed when she came upon the scale model. Baznicki lost her husband, Ken, in the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"I'm so happy that you are part of this tribute to him," she told Euser.
The designers of the monument chose water to be its hallmark because universally, water is seen to be cleansing and healing.
While some parts of the plan to redevelop the World Trade Center site are mired in controversy, the memorial's broader concept of "Reflecting Absence" is still on.
The model isn't just to show how the memorial will look; it is also meant to show how it will sound and feel.
There is a mock-up, more than eight metres tall, of the water walls ringing the voids marking the twin towers' absence.
"You just come from sidewalk level and you see this huge void and water crashing down from all sides and going into this space," Euser said.
He has been working since January to get a combination of various factors right.
His goal is to create a veil of water that won't:
splash visitors;
disintegrate in the wind;
make too much noise;
freeze in winter; and
clog up in the fall when leaves are falling.
The state of New York held an update on the memorial project on Thursday.
What people saw weren't thin sheets of water but more sharply defined vertical bands spaced just under four centimetres apart.
"It's an incredibly graceful and delicate way to do it on an enormous scale," Douglas Ross Findlay, the project's landscape architect, told reporters.
"It's a magical moment to see it realized," said Michael Arad of Handel Architects. "The way the water is behaving is incredible. It makes it feel somehow more real, as if you're moving forward."
The design team said the mock-up was necessary because water can't be "scaled" -- meaning how a water-based installation will behave in real life is different from a small-scale model of it.
The project has raised the ire of some of his neighbors, who say Euser has no permit and has violated zoning regulations for his suburban neighborhood.
The model will come down by winter, but one neighbour has already spent $15,000 trying to fight the four storey structure.
"All that comes to my mind is the amount of costs I'm incurring just to get the city to consent to make sure that this does not become an industrial use area," said neighbour Harry Harakh.
Despite the hassles, Euser likes the professional challenge and feels lucky to be part of the project.
"It's a privilege to be part of the healing process," he said.
"I couldn't believe it when they gave me the nod for this thing because that's the last thing I expected."
Based on a report from CTV's Ravi Baichwal in Toronto