A Garden Stepping into the Sky

[Ron Drummond]

Listening to The Ladder last summer helped prep my subconscious for some unexpected work. I awoke on the morning of 5 September 2002 to discover a building inside my imagination. Five hundred hours of work later, I await the release on Monday, 28 April 2003 of the official rules for the international WTC memorial design competition, expecting my design to have been disqualified before the competition even begins but wondering whether there's enough wiggle room in the rules to allow me to accommodate it to the constricted space they are likely to allow.

http://www.oz.net/~jhawk/wtc/gardensteps/Cityscape/Pa1l01_crop_m.jpg

You can read about the Garden Steps (the farther in you go, the bigger it gets) and see more pictures here:

http://www.oz.net/~jhawk/wtc/gardensteps/

In December, a grassroots coalition of about 30 folks here in Seattle pitched in and sent me to New York City for two weeks to talk to people about the design. My in-depth journal coverage of the opening days of that trip can be found here:

http://www.oz.net/~jhawk/wtc/gardensteps/journal-index.html

And you can find a link to the streaming video of a local news broadcast about me here:

http://www.komotv.com/stories/22853.htm

Just wanted to share something that has filled a lot of my working life and the life of my heart over the last eight months.

Ron

[Skyward]

Very nice, Ron! Unique angle I must say. To say that this effort is years ahead of its time is likely a serious understatement.

[Ron Drummond]

Thanks, Skyward! I invite folks to imagine what it would be like to climb those steps and wander the gardens or to stand at the bottom of the deeper of the two wells. It's an intense space for sure, because it literally embraces the emptiness that can never be filled, and makes it clear just how huge that emptiness is. And yet the steps surrounding the wells would be bursting with the fullness of life.

http://www.oz.net/~jhawk/wtc/gardensteps/Cityscape/Scape01a_crop_m.jpg

[ranyart]

Wow! Ron I absolutely love your design, it's so innovative and progressive . It's unobtrusive yet thought-provoking in it's simplicity. You are really on to something there!

Any thoughts to incorporating light beams to the night time sky upward in those mournfull empty spaces. Something was done to that effect already and was very inspirational if only for a short while. But something more permanent, have them light sensitive, so every evening when it get's dark enough the beams start their slow reach for the heaven's above. Just a thought.

You are truly a Yes- inspired creative individual and that seems to be absolutely inherent in all of their music and within true Yes fans everywhere!

W/R Ranyart.

[Ron Drummond]

Hi Ranyart, thank you for your kind and encouraging words. Yes, the Towers of Light could easily be done with the Garden Steps. The empty wells would stand exactly where the towers once stood, so an array of search lights around the perimeter at the bottom of each well pointing straight up would create the desired effect rather nicely. Whether the lights would be used every night or only on the anniversary, I don't know.

http://www.oz.net/~jhawk/wtc/gardensteps/Cityscape/Scape03a_m.jpg

One idea for an anniversary observance would be to raise two sets of four hot-air ballons, with each set forming a square out of the thick ropes tying the balloons together and with each balloon moored to the ground by a long rope, so that a physical tracery of the lost buildings' outlines would rise into the sky to their former height and then, for two and half hours, bend and twist and drift in the winds high above lower Manhattan.

The official rules for the WTC memorial design contest were released on Monday, and as expected they're pretty strict about designs needing to conform to the small memorial space provided in Daniel Libeskind's site plan. But then at the news conference, competition officials and two members of the 13-member jury (including Vietnam Memorial designer Maya Lin), said emphatically that ALL designs will be considered, and they actively encouraged designers to break the rules if that's what conscience dictates! Which means there's hope for the Garden Steps!

Onward!

[Sheerah]

I have seen your design elsewhere, Ron, though I can't recall where. I love it's innovation and sense of harmony!

Good luck.

I have to read more about this over the weekend when I have some more time on my hands.

[Dances w/PURPLE]

Ron..what an exceptional idea!

I was watching the introduction of the jury and to see Lin present was symbolic and moving. I was very happy to see them say that foremost there would be "flexibility" in the judging. Very good to hear.

From the bottom of my heart to the top step on that stairway to heaven, I wish you the best !

Most excellent work my friend!

[Ron Drummond]

Thanks for your good words, Sheila! I'd welcome any further thoughts or comments you might have. Even after all these months, the Steps keep opening up in my imagination.

http://www.oz.net/~jhawk/wtc/gardensteps/Cityscape/PA2a01_s.jpg

And thank you, Dances-with-Purple! (I wish I could introduce you to an old friend of mine, Purple Mark.) Wow everyone is so kind. The response I've been getting from the beginning has included a significant number of folks who are really moved by the Garden Steps, and it is very humbling -- it came to me in a hypnopompic dream, so I must believe that on some level it is a gift, from God or Creation or the goddess, the Tao, the great ineffable Is, whatever you wish to call it. I genuinely believe with all my heart that this design answers the memorial question for 9/11 and that the world would be a better place if this building were in it. Anyway, I was blown away to learn of Maya Lin's comments, because it means there is still some hope for my design or for some variation on it -- and hope, too, for countless other designs that would have been out-right disqualified if not for the courage of the jurors.

I'm strangely saddened to learn today that it appears that Daniel Libeskind's "Wedge of Light" -- the single most attractive part of his WTC site plan -- won't work as advertised. For all my reservations about his design in general, I certainly wish Mr. Libeskind well, and am sad to see that a real scandal might be unfolding around the rebuilding plans.

Ron

[Dances w/PURPLE]

I was looking at the exterior, would that be mirrored on the opposite side?

[STARRSHIP TROOPER]

Thats odd! Didn't they do this same concept in Iraq 7000 years ago. The hanging gardens of Babalon.
Starrship Trooper

[Ron Drummond]

Hi Starrship -- The actual shape of my Garden Steps was dictated by the shape of the steps in the stairwells of the World Trade Center Towers -- the steps that 25,000 people ran down to escape with their lives and that 300 firefighters ran up to help people escape, many of them never to return. Gardens symbolize life, and these steps give shape to the empty wells sunk into them -- wells that are literally the lower parts of the two towers turned inside out. So my symbolism is life embracing the emptiness that can never be filled.

Is there an echo of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, as you suggest? Sure, it was one of the ancient Wonders of the World, though those gardens were not shaped like stairs. And they certainly were not what I was thinking of when I was working on my memorial. The Garden Steps also bear a resemblance to ancient Aztec pyramids, and I've had people point out resonances with cultures all around the world. Considering that people from 75 countries were working at the WTC that day and lost their lives in the disaster, that seems appropriate. But again the originary shapes for my memorial were the stairwells inside the towers, and the towers themselves.

http://www.oz.net/~jhawk/wtc/gardensteps/Cityscape/Scape06_m.jpg

Dances -- you asked about the external facade. The photos actually show my architectural model with two different possible mirrored surfaces, silver and green. They are intended to represent mirrored window glass, for indeed the steps would be a building with huge amounts of office, retail, and cultural space inside it, though functionally it would all be subordinate to the memorial aspects of the structure. (Oh, by the way, I edited my last post to reply to your first post -- we were both writing them at the same time, so I didn't see yours until later.)

Ron

[Earl Grey]

I LOVE it.

This is sublime Ron.

So-far, I've seen a lot of gloss, smoke and mirrors out there, as to designs for monument.

Here's the question: how does one build on a graveyard???

And, sadly, that is what ground zero is. There has been little thought put forth, as to appeasing what happened, and building around it in an ascendent manner.

Somehow, amazingly, you have done just that thing: to look to the future, while never forgetting our past. Those who forget the past are destined to repeat their mistakes.

I think your stariway is a beautiful tribute. And it scales the walls of the present and leads into a better future.

"Future Times will stand and clearly smile..."

The boychild Solomon would be pleased with your design.

Kudos and warm wishes. May your staircase ascend.

Earl Grey:yesbird:

[upbgirl]

sorry ron.. got hung up on that word..
i am taken aback by the 'thought' you put into this design.
and the fact that you would include plants.. beautiful and brilliant..
i barely glanced at the words, after i heard a little description on why each 'facet' was the way it was..
good for you, ron, and even if your design isnt picked, what a miracle for you to have something so eloquent come to you in a dream..amazing..a true tribute from a very thoughtful person..
best of luck that more dreams come..
[and you might have a new one in amsterdam, huh?? i BET you will];)

[Dances w/PURPLE]

Reading your inspiration for the design was so moving Ron. It's the kind of thing the committee will be looking at, it is hoped, as equally as the structure itself.

Learning the function part of the center, which was a major issue with some of the individuals, as well as the essential part that it be a place of tranquility and rememberance...I think you captured it. Again, I look at the design and seeing the perimeter of the absent towers present in the stairway design is, is, is...I have no adjective for it. It has moved me. This artist thanks you for that.

[SisterBluebird]

Ron, your design is breathtaking, and so is the fact that you may have first imagined it in a dream. If only we all paid more attention to our "Dreamtime", think how much beauty and meaning we could draw from it.

I love The Ladder, and a lot of it has always suggested healing to me, in my case from depression. It awakened in you a vision of healing of many things - grief, rage, confusion - on a huge scale. If it doesn't win the competition, it would be a wonderful thing to build anyway, anywhere. After all, the WTC is just one site where atrocities have been commited in our world and healing is needed. Just a thought.

[TNyesfan]

Ron, you do not know me very well as I am relatively new here, but know that I do not exaggerate often. With that said, your design took my breath away. I had to try not to cry when I saw it. It's lines are beautiful and they flow, yet it captures and defines such strong emotion.
I was reading about the competition in "The New Yorker" just two days ago. Best of luck. You've done some wonderful work.

[Ron Drummond]

I'm grateful to all of you for your comments and your encouragement and moral support. It means a lot, because it reminds me that this is worth doing, indeed that I have been vouchsafed this task and cannot turn from it. I don't mean that to sound portentous, but it's how it felt to me at the beginning -- after waking that morning, I spent several hours thinking about it and it just was abundantly clear to me that this is what they should build, that this is what we needed -- and the more I worked on it the more I believed that it was so. But it's been exhausting, and for the last three months I've been convinced that there was almost no hope the Garden Steps would ever be built.

But now the jury throws the competition wide open, and after more than a year when the powers-that-be have insisted that everything BUT a memorial be chosen first, making the memorial inherently an afterthought, the jury is saying "No!" and that the memorial is priority one, it comes first, and if the one they choose can't be shoe-horned into Daniel Libeskind's constricted space, then Mr. Libeskind will have to recast his plan to accommodate the memorial. That's the implication, anyway, that what is best for the people and for remembering those we lost and how we lost them and why we must continue, THAT comes first. And it makes me very grateful to the jurors for doing that. And I know there is still very little chance that my design will be chosen, but it must go forth anyway.

Now I have to decide whether or how much to "cut down" the design so that it's more compatible with Libeskind's site plan. As it stands, it would displace his main building and more or less force him to reconfigure almost his entire plan. That flexibility was potentially there even before the jury spoke. When the LMDC chose the winner of the site competition in late February, it wasn't so much Libeskind's design that won -- even though that is how it was presented in the press -- it was Libeskind himself who won, so that he will be the head architect for the site as a whole, no matter how much he has to change his design. And the baroque NY politics are such that any number of changes to his design WILL be made before anything gets built no matter who wins the memorial competition. So the jury recognized the reality of the situation and changed the priorities.

Still, some friends have advised me to trim the Steps, reduce their size while maintaining the essential negative space treatment of the two towers. It is without a doubt a monumental structure I am proposing, but that very monumentality is part of its power, I think. To stand on those steps and look out over the city! One whole step as currently configured would be 40,000 square feet in area, think of it!

I have a lot of hard thinking to do in the next few weeks. And a lot of soft thinking too. And then a lot of work to prepare the submission in the format they require. And I have to try to write the most eloquent words I have ever written. And somehow keep body and soul together during this time, under conditions of severe financial duress. So it's scary as well as exhilirating, but I know I can do it, with a little help from my friends. I never would have gotten to where I am now without that, goddess am I ever grateful for all the good people in my life, which now includes all of you!

Bless you.

Ron

[BrianD]

Great stuff Ron - love to see a closeup. What types of plants do you envisage in the gardens?

[Ron Drummond]

Thanks, Brian. Here's a closer view, an earlier shot of the Steps in isolation:

http://www.oz.net/~jhawk/wtc/gardensteps/WTCG01_m.jpg

As you can see, the top step and hence the back end of the staircase as a whole is squared off, whereas in the in-situ cityscape photographs shown earlier in the thread the upper corners have been cut off, so the back end is shaped like half a hexagon. This change was necessary to fit the space, and is an improvement, I think, on several fronts.

Two huge enlargements that you can scroll around on and see the details of the architectural model can be found here --

http://www.oz.net/~jhawk/wtc/gardensteps/WTCG03.jpg

-- and here --

http://www.oz.net/~jhawk/wtc/gardensteps/WTCG01.jpg

All but one of the in-isolation pictures on the homepage have two sizes of enlargement.

Bear in mind that the scale is one inch equals a hundred feet -- so my model is smaller than the proverbial breadbox: ten inches long by five wide by five and half tall. While a single whole step is intended to be fifty feet tall by eighty feet wide by five hundred feet long, on the model that's half an inch tall by four/fifths of an inch wide by five inches long. So it's too tiny to depict the gardens in detail. The garden lay-outs I do manage are not meant to depict how they'd actually be laid out, but are there to simply suggest the variety of possible lay-outs they could have.

The pond at the top is shallow; water would be pumped to holding tanks at night, when the rates are lower. The flowing streams would be diverted as needed into the irrigation systems, which would be gravity-driven.

What kind of plants? That's really open. Because the beds would be built in (so they'd be flush with the level of the footpaths), along with irrigation and drainage systems etc., for practical reasons there wouldn't be a lot of trees, though there certainly should be some. Plants of various kinds and bushes, flower gardens, almost anything appropriate to the climate. Having one or two or three steps devoted to growing food would be wonderful, p-patches for the families of those who died, so that on special occasions they could gather and make feasts and share them with one another. These gardens would be so huge that every family or community that wanted one could have a largish garden patch to cultivate as they saw fit. I had thought of the tenth step as being filled with fruit trees. And of course the opportunities for the use of "green" technologies are many. The possibilities are wide open.

[BrianD]

Close-up it is amazing - a bit of Roger Dean's Close to the Edge influence but clearly original. I love the flow of water in a wandering path.

You know, it may be a good idea to get some opinions about plants from a horticulturalist so that you can be proactive on that one and anticipate queries. Also, many plants have symbolic meanings in different cultures and I think it would be a great opportunity to incorporate plants symbolic of peace and related themes.

[STARRSHIP TROOPER]

You should make this one of the wonders of the modern world. It's a far more appealing tribute than the new high fake towers praposal. New York doesn't need any new buildings that tower into the sky. The steps gargen design will atract more people. They'll have a place to reflect on the trajety and the beauty of how life goes on. People would be more likely to return again and again to the steps for its ever growing beauty than they would to the memorial twin towers. Make this a new marvel of engineering and design. Push the boundries of how we build and make these steps appear to be flying in heaven like the souls who were lost there. Yes this is not a spin off of the gardens of Babalon. A diferent design alltogether. Plus this is for the people not just one queen. I whant to see this built not two more towers.
Starrship Trooper:thumbs: :thumbs: :thumbs:

[Earl Grey]

It really IS the best design I've seen for the memorial, Ron.

I agree with Starrship here, this would be something I would HAVE to see... And would wish to return to.

I haven't ever had the desire to see 'ground zero'.
The plans I've seen for rebuilding the trade center in some shape or form have just reinforced that feeling.

If the garden staircase were erected, I would simply HAVE to make the trip. It's that moving.

Again, a beautiful monument Ron. You can feel proud for having listened to your dreams.

Earl:yesbird:

[Ron Drummond]

Hi Earl -- Thank you for your kind encouragement, and your eloquent view. Here and elsewhere it means a great deal to me. Can't stop thinking about it? Yeah, that's the amazing thing about it, as a lot of folks have discovered -- given a chance, it just keeps growing in the imagination. Like I said before, the farther in you go, the bigger it gets.

Starrship -- hey man, that triple thumb's up gave me a big grin, thanks! Also really appreciate your endorsement of the monumental approach. It's a completely different kind of monumentality from what New York and most big cities are used to, but I think you're right that the Garden Steps would become a repeat destination not only for people around the world but for New Yorkers too -- so many different views, with the gardens as backdrop and surround, it would be impossible to see all of it in a single visit! And as much as the memorial is for mourning the lost, it is also for celebrating life, and I feel certain that if built people would soon be getting married in those gardens.

Brian D, I'm honored that you would see a resemblance with the work of the estimable Mr. Dean. Glad to hear the close-ups hold up -- it took me over a hundred hours to build that model! Your advice on seeking help from a horticulturalist is well taken. I've been meaning to for some months, and now would certainly be a good time. Being proactive with the garden is a good idea. One of the things about the Steps that I like is simply that it is a huge space, one that invites the contributions of many many people. And with the limitations I'm working under at the moment, there are any number of things I'd love to elaborate on that I can't. Maybe, if they choose this design, that will change. :-)

[Earl Grey]

Good call Brian. That's what I love so much about Ron's design. It doesn't have the 'rounded' architecture of most Dean constructs, but it has that 'feel'. An organic feel, yet in lines and planes. That's saying something! It really does work.

If the memorial were too bizarre a shape, it wouldn't fit into the NY skyline (That, in fact, was the problem I had with the other designs I've seen: so-far every one I've seen was either too bold, or too blase. And you don't want to ruin the skyline. Fen Shui).
The Garden Steps would fit right in, yet they would stand out as well.
~~~~~

Ron: I was reading your earlier comment about standing in the deepest well, looking up. That would be such a moment of pathos.
What an experience that would be: to greive in the shadow of the past, while seeing the ascent of life.

9/11 had such a deep impact on us all: to be able to confront that terrible day while surrounded by verdence and beauty would be such a healing thing.

I truly hope your vision takes form.

[Sheerah]

I am so glad that the weekend afforded me the chance to read about the idea behind your design, Ron. I also clicked over to the CNN link and checked out a few pages of designs over there. The designs from the kids really tugged at my heart strings. Your design Ron, really stirred multiple emotions within.

As a Jersey Girl, growing up literally across the river from NYC, the twin towers are as much of an instution to me, as the Statue of Liberty. I remember as a young girl, the building of the twin towers. They were completed by the time I was in junior high. I could see them out of many of my classroom windows, daily. As I got older, I would go to the Top of the World restaurant for drinks or for dinner. When I was 16, I got to steer a little 2 seater plane, down the hudson and right along the WTC. What a thrill!

So, in my mind, I wanted to see two towers, even taller, back on that site. I felt adament about it. A big giant F.U., if you will. I felt that was the best design. And, on that CNN link, there are quite a few buildings that fit that bill. There was one design that caught my eye and stayed with me. It is the very large, single sail-shaped ediface.

But Ron, after reading about the thought behind your design, I started to think how much more sense your idea makes. It's a very thoughtful memorial, it's functional office space, and to build gardens, and waterfalls, living things of beauty and life force, well, how to say.... your design deeply touched me. Your dedication to your design touched me.

Oh my, you do have your work cut out for you. I wish you all the best. You are a fine example of humanity. I am proud to share a Yesfans membership with you. Your inspriation seems to have been almost divine, if one were to think that way; or perhaps you have found a way to tap into the absolute deepest, truest, most creative crevices of your subconscious. Anyhow, you bring me to rambling. I'll hush now. Good luck! Stick with it! Just think, you now can go through your life saying, "I have made a difference!"

[Ron Drummond]

Thank you so much for sharing your experiences, Sheila, and for your encouragement. I don't know what to say. I feel pretty inadequate to the task a lot of the time, but now comes the time for me to shape all of these ideas into the form required and to submit it officially and await the jury's decision. And I must understand that statistically there's almost no chance that this design will win, and yet I cannot help but believe that the Garden Steps can transcend statistics and be heard and felt by the powers that be. And I must believe that even if it isn't chosen -- and from a practical standpoint it almost certainly won't be -- it was worth bringing it this far into the world, just so it might provide some healing balm to the hearts of a few people, as it seems it really has. That is enough, somehow. If it has helped a few people to heal, then I can only be humbly grateful for that, and for the honor of escorting it into the world.

You know how it feels, though, sometimes? It feels like the Garden Steps really want to be built. Why they chose me I do not know, save that I recognized them for what they were, and was willing to devote myself to bringing them into the world. But I sometimes wish they'd picked someone rich or powerful, or better positioned in New York politics. I've worried a lot that I might not be good enough to close the gap, to get it across. Almost everything I'm doing I've never done before, and I've gone into debt and have endangered myself in this pursuit. Yet I have faith I can finish the job, even now when it's not clear how I will be able to survive for the next eight weeks while I prepare the submission (I am out of work and almost out of resources). And yet this image keeps me going --

I imagine our great-grandshildren climbing those steps a hundred years from now, and that brings a few quiet tears to my eyes even as I type. Peering into the deeper well from 28 stories up, looking across the football-field-sized gap to the well's far corner, and then down 28 stories of empty air, down the trade center facade that covers the walls of the well, so that it looks like you're looking into a broken tower turned inside out -- you will know to the marrow of your bones just how monumental the disaster was, in a way that no amount of looking at ancient video footage can convey. And then to turn from that view and find yourself surrounded by living gardens, and beyond the gardens an incredible view of 22nd-century lower Manhattan -- what a thing to imagine.

-- and so, Lord willing, I will find a way, and step aside, and let the Garden Steps speak for themselves. And pray for open hearts and open minds and wide eyes -- the kind of hearts and minds and eyes I've found so abundantly here at Yesfans.

Ron