Posted on Tuesday, September 12, 2006 - 07:26 pm:

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"Postcards" Will Be
Staten Island September 11 Memorial

Project Background

Borough President James P. Molinaro set aside $2 million in capital funds for a memorial to Staten Islanders lost on September 11, 2001. An Advisory Committee was formed, composed of Deputy Borough President Dan Donovan; City Councilmen Andrew Lanza, Michael McMahon, James Oddo; Community Board Chairmen John Antoniello, George Caputo, Lou Caravone; family representatives Sam Cannizzaro, Patricia Henrique, Linda Manfredi, Joanne Modafferi, and architect Vince MacDermot. They selected a site on the St. George waterfront.

A Request for Proposals resulted in 179 entries from 19 countries. The Advisory Committee narrowed the pool to six finalists, who then refined their designs. The six proposals were exhibited and community opinions solicited throughout the borough, followed by a public forum at the College of Staten Island. The next day, the finalists made presentations to the Committee and answered their remaining questions. The Advisory Committee then discussed the six proposals and selected Masayuki Sono's "Postcards."

The New York City Economic Development Corporation, which is the agency with jurisdiction over the esplanade site, will contract with consultants and contractors and oversee the project. Laura Jean Watters, COAHSIıs Executive Director, was responsible for coordination of the panel process as well as providing community liaison and outreach.



Masayuki Sono's Poetic Proposal

Written by Tamara Coombs
First published in COAHSI Arts & Letters July/August 2003 Issue

Architect Masayuki Sono always has postcards in his apartment. Some are sent to friends and family. He writes on others and keeps them. When he wants to make a model, he grabs a postcard. Unlike many young designers, the 32 year-old Sono works out his forms by hand rather than on a computer. Sketches may come first, but his early design process depends on hand-built models. At the public forum on the Memorial Competition designs, Sono held a small one on his palm, turning it to illustrate his points.

Sono was born in Kobe, a seaport in Japan. For the Staten Island September 11 Memorial, he thought back to the ten years he spent as a boy in Fort Lee, New Jersey. His father worked in Manhattan. He imagined losing him as others lost those they loved on September 11. Through this "painful and scary" process of trying to place himself "in their shoes," he focused on the victims and their families, and what they would want.

Sono then made sketches and began to test his concepts by building models, models of "even the most stupid idea." He wanted to somehow connect the victims to those left behind. In a serendipitous moment, he realized that the postcard in his hands was more than model-making material. It was a way to send messages of love and remembrance.

Even in the era of cell phones and e-mail, the postcard continues to be a handwritten communication sent across great distances. Sono liked that it was a commonplace part of daily life. He multiplied its dimensions by 267 to convey the scale of the loss for Staten Island, then gave the postcard origami-like inward folds (as if to keep a personal message private).

Sono chose to be abstract and metaphoric rather than literal in his design, to allow each person who experiences it to call on their own memories and interpretation. Twin postcards can be seen as a reference to the twin towers. He placed the postcards side by side, close together at the entrance to form a compressive space. The space widens and releases towards the harbor and the open sky. A view of lower Manhattan is framed by the high walls. He softly bent the upper edges at an angle, transforming simple rectangles into abstractly organic forms in which some see wings of a dove or biomorphic shapes.

To individually memorialize those who died, Sono designed reachable rows of rectangular "commemorative stamps" for the interior walls. In addition to a name and other facts, each white granite "stamp" bears a profile facing the harbor. When the sun strikes a profile, it will cast a shadow on the recessed granite box behind it. When the wall is shaded, an open slot behind each profile will backlight the profile with daylight. At night, spotlights will substitute for the sun. Shifting light and shadow on the profiles will enliven the surface of the memorial as they mark time and change.

Given his design, it's not surprising that Sono is an artist as well as architect. He has been in sixty exhibitions in media ranging from watercolor to video. Sono's choice of favorite painter and architect suggest an independent mind. He likes Andrew Wyeth and the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer ("He's my god"), known for his organic use of concrete and expressive design.

Sono was good at math and physics in school. Sono chose architecture as a way to combine his skills and interests. His father is an engineer of a highly technical sort. Sono himself is at ease with the practicalities of construction. He recognized concrete would be an appropriately long-lasting choice for a waterfront site. He even cast a sample of Portland cement and light-colored sand and aggregate ("not as white as I want") to illustrate the concrete of the memorial, which will be sealed to resist pollution and graffiti.

As it happens, Sono is in the United States in large part because of a disaster that struck his own hometown. In 1995, while Sono was in a graduate exchange program at the University of Seattle, Kobe was struck by an earthquake. It cost 5,000 lives and displaced 300,000 people. There were no applicants for the University of Seattle/University of Kobe program for the following year, so Sono was awarded another scholarship to remain a second year. After he received his Master of Architecture degree from the University of Seattle, he returned to Kobe to complete his M Arch there. The Kobe he knew was gone. He decided to come back to the United States and work here. Since 1998, he has been with Voorsanger & Associates Architects in Manhattan.

At the public forum on the Memorial design held at the College of Staten Island, CSI's president, Dr. Marlene Springer welcomed those in attendance. In an allusion to CSI's past as Willowbrook State School, Dr. Springer remarked of CSI that a thing of beauty had come out of what had been a tragedy for many. She held out the hope that something of beauty could come out of the September 11 tragedy as well. "Postcards" promises to be something of beauty for Staten Island. Designed by a talented and empathetic architect, it was chosen by a panel that saw in it a memorial to those lost and a comfort to those left behind. "The first time I saw it, it made me think of the wings of a butterfly," said Patricia Henrique, who lost her daughter Michelle on September 11. "It's about life; new life evolving."

By September 11, 2004, "Postcards" will be sending Masayuki Sono's poetic message across New York Harbor.

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