AIA Big Sibs, NY
10/11-13, 2001

Thursday 10/11, Newark - Arrive EWR 5:30pm, meet Rena and Steve, from other flights, at baggage claim as pre-arranged, with greater-than-usual hugs betraying our relief to have made it safely across the country, on the one-month anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. This mode of joyful reunion after even brief separations persists throughout our 3-day stay in NY, as well as a fair amount of "checking in" to make sure people have made it to appointments and verifying where and when we would next meet. Proceeding by cab ($26 for the hour-plus ride, how do cab-drivers survive?), we take a circuitous, scenic route with many delays at security checkpoints as well as normal traffic snarls, allowing ample time to gain a sense of Newark and a long view of the NY cityscape, a nervous advent for the three of us. The driver activates pre-recorded messages in celebrity voices, offering "fasten seatbelts" and other travel advice. We notice a lovely autumn day, golden-headed poplars (?) and a leafy tang snapping the air – both vanishing as we head into and through mid-town and the Garment District to our hotel, the Roger Williams, on Madison Avenue at 31st Street.

7pm After we've settled into rooms with a view of the spire atop the Empire State Building mere blocks away ("what if THAT one falls too?"), Rick Bell, AIA NY's energetic Exec, greets some of the gathering Big Sibs in the Roger Williams lobby – a spare space by the hand of Rafael Vi�oly. Rick departs homeward for a rare night w/ his family, while the Boston (Robert Brown, Richard Fitzgerald, Nancy Jenner), Philadelphia (Peter Brown, John Claypool, Janice Woodcock) and Dallas (Richard Morgan and Susan) delegations join Seattle's for dinner at a nearby Italian caf� of some charm. We get word that the Houston folk have gone to the theater. Everyone gets better acquainted, and we manage to forget our foreboding for long moments, in the warm glow of bourbon, good red wine, and calamari. And so to sleep.

Friday 10/12, 7am Gathering for breakfast in the Roger Williams mezzanine, with other Big Sibs convening, including Houston (Rey de la Reza, Ray Leiker, Martha Murphree) and Chicago (Jon Fischel); then walking a few blocks through the warm and clear morning air and swirling crowds to Two Penn Plaza, at Penn Station adjacent to Madison Square Garden. Tight security takes half an hour before we convene at a McGraw-Hill/Architectural Record conference room, our complement now including Jim Dinegar and Brenda Henderson of the AIA national staff as well as VP Barbara Nadel.

AIA NY President Margaret Helfand, George Miller, and Rick Bell (and later, Leevi Kiil and others) greet us and start things off with their highly abbreviated accounts of what they've done since the Tuesday morning attacks. Many have heard their words and seen their faces in interviews in various media, as they've bravely represented their fellow architects in expressing their observations, hopes, and intentions to help their community understand and recover from the recent devastations. Now in a circle of sympathetic colleagues, these incredibly capable architects show the strain they've borne, and momentarily break down – barely interrupting the intense, clear information-sharing, and adding to the power of their witness.

Having followed the course of the AIA's post-9/11 endeavors in advance as now, we admire the way our colleagues had immediately drawn together, first as a community of individuals who know and care for each other, and further as a resource to their fellow citizens. From the first moment, AIA New York set up communications about the attack's toll on architects and their co-workers, helping people to get in touch and to exchange information about and with their colleagues. The AIA NY website broadcast this and other information, including relief services and information on the kinds of help needed in the immediate and then chronic aftermath. In days that followed, those systems also helped architects get connected with each other and with other resources to help them deal with devastations of varying degree – from the tragedy of losing family, friends, colleagues to the complete destruction of records from decades of practice, to the lack of a place to sleep or work. The community ideal got a real workout, and it showed its true power.

As our New York colleagues recount, on and after 9/11, leaders from other AIA components got in touch with offers of help of all kinds. In this tragedy as in the 2/28/01 Nisqually Quake that rocked Western Washington, AIA quickly facilitated an information network to help bring forward to community attention vital information deriving from design professionals' special knowledge. In the case of the 9/11 attacks, this included observations on the structure and significance of the World Trade Center towers, and about their design (by Seattle native architect Minoru Yamasaki and structural engineer John Skilling). In fact, MSNBC contacted Behrooz Emam of the AIA Seattle Disaster Preparedness & Response Team for a nationally-broadcast interview about the process of the Towers' destruction. As many know from accounts seen in those days as now, our incredibly capable and committed New York colleagues repeatedly rose to the occasion to advise their communities in similar media inquiries – and here with their professional organization siblings from across the US, they share deep thoughts on what happened to them and indeed to all of us.

Throughout the morning, representatives from the various large urban components talk about issues of professional survival in our respective environments, with a focus on what we can learn from each other, and especially in tough times. Also not surprisingly, issues of wise and efficient use of limited resources through collaboration, and of the key role AIA components play in identifying, nurturing, and activating design professional leadership through advocacy and community service. Although all components' programs recognize these, the recent New York experience has brought out outstanding examples. The concerted action by the AIA local, state, and national components to devise and implement effective strategy for the exertion of design values with key partners has already resulted in AIA's visible placement at or near the front of the recovery effort. It will take years for the affected communities of NY and the world to understand and to heal, to find the right combination of memory and hope to achieve anything like "reconstruction."

On behalf of our Washington colleagues, Steve Arai presents a check for nearly $5,000 to the AIA NY Action Fund, representing gifts from the AIA Washington Council, AIA Vancouver, AIA Seattle, and numerous individuals throughout Washington. We know that other gifts will follow, and we have confidence that our New York colleagues will spend them wisely and in a way that brings benefit to many. Rena notes, "When I facilitate meetings, I often speak about taking responsibility for your passions, and there is no doubt that AIA NY is doing just that. I felt proud to be an architect and an AIA Member." Through the AIA NY Action program, others have a chance to share the passion and the commitment.

Winding up a day that included a tour of the Record's editorial production areas and its rich archives, we head on to a reception hosted by the AIA New York Board of Directors, at the offices of Ronnette Riley on the 80th floor of the Empire State Building – again, after passing several security checks. From there, a wide sweep of space draws the eye downtown to the WTC crater and the smoky haze that rises from the awful vacancy. It helps prepare us for what we will see on tomorrow morning's tour from a nearer ground-level vantage. After a Korean dinner together in the mode of a Thanksgiving feast, we part for the night.

I notice that at all times I remain prepared to flee, uncharacteristically stowing my belongings in ready-to-pack order, hardly occupying the room. Anytime I go out, I make doubly sure I have "essentials" with me and that my clothing won't interfere with moving fast.

Saturday 10/13: to Ground Zero Another warm and bright morning draws us together in the lobby, and sends Steve out to grab a disposable camera. Rick Bell commences our tour of downtown, reached by subway – no security check on public transit. Rick, who occupied a post with the City of New York before coming over to head the AIA NY staff team, offers knowledgeable observations of City Hall and nearby spaces, at times with witty anecdotes from their political and architectural history.

As our band of 15 or so makes its way through the maze of streets, the crowds begin to intensify, and also the rough ashen tang of the smoky atmosphere. Barricades everywhere control the crowds as we near ground zero. The shared pilgrimage literally fills the streets: thousands follow the perimeter of the 17-acre site, pausing at measured intervals to gaze down a corridor of view or through a strategic hole in a drape of tarpaulin toward a striking angle: of the back-veiled adjacent buildings, of the remarkably unscathed Trinity Church and its adjacent cemetery filled with America's ancestry (most visibly, the grave of Alexander Hamilton), of ash-covered buildings, of a cascade of black steel spilling from the ruin.

Our chatter slows down and ceases, our faces go numb, our eyes water. Everywhere, very young people in fatigues or guard uniforms face and gently discourage the crowds from exceeding the barricaded limits, or respond quietly to questions. People bring flowers or flags to weave into the fences, messages to post on poles. Deeply touched by all that has happened, one wants to touch back.

As many have seen in photos, the building pieces that remain more or less intact and standing, though seared and precariously canted, form an arcade of columns topped by woven arches – a temple of ruin – as Rena blurts out "the cathedral of capitalism." (Later she reports what she didn't say at the time: "Greed underlies all this evil, greed for profit and greed for power. What a waste of a perfectly beautiful planet and all of its resources! What a waste, what a waste, what a waste – the words kept ringing over and over in my mind as I viewed the ruin.")

The presence of departed spirits seems palpable: whispers in the fitful silt, a glimpse of ordinary people at ordinary tasks but just beyond seeing. The dead and the living mingle in a shrine of absence, populating the destruction site. Mechanical vultures, cranes drag shovels through the rubble below, sifting and selecting bits. A truck carries away a mass of twisted beams, the black contorted shapes laced down to the flatbed – for analysis of the properties of steel under the particular stress of that unprecedented impact, someone tells us. Rena reports that when she saw this, "I knew it had really happened. I suddenly understood why people have the need to see an open casket." Steve aims the camera at this or that vignette, as evidenced in the images at right.

Noon. Suddenly we realize we've passed the whole morning at this emotional task, gotten as close as we can to the world's wound and exhausted our ability to take it in and understand it. A pale ash with a sickly smell – reportedly from still-smoldering pulverized concrete – hoarsens our voices, reddens our eyes, and permeates our clothes. We forcibly tear ourselves away from the sight and near vicinity of the place where so many died and such mighty monuments toppled.

Our leaden conversation shows us hardly able to distract ourselves, until Rick brings us to the 'Storefront for Art and Architecture,' a notable design community landmark – and nearby, a bookstore with Seattle's own ARCADE for sale, and displayed in the streetfront window. Finally we can put our minds elsewhere, once again think of eating and drinking and talking, savoring the soft autumn sunshine under a bower of grapes in the garden of a French cafe, and restoring ourselves once more to the awesome tasks of survival.