Around Ground Zero - Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics - page 89

INTERVIEW WITH ALICE TWEMLOW
New York, 2002—
AT: What was the stimulus for your mapping project?
LK: The project grew out of discussions in New York New Visions, a temporary
coalition of architects and designers who gathered to imagine responses on an
urban scale to September 11. I was working in a group interested in proposing
ideas for temporary memorials to the events. I had a memorial map of Sarajevo—
designed by FAMA, the same activist designers who'd created the Survival Guide
Sarajevo early in the siege—that I had used to tour the city after the war in 1999. 45
I brought it into one of our meetings to provide inspiration and a bit of context
because I was trying to show that memorials don't have to be permanent.
AT: Why a map?
LK: It became clear that at that particular moment in time, the most pressing need
was to respond to the number of people who were going to Ground Zero and look -
ing at what was there. When I was first at the site, visitors had no idea which
streets were open or closed and no idea where the towers had been. They crowded
around these little Xeroxed FEMA maps that were posted on walls for the con -
struction workers. Often, the gate guards had enlarged the FEMA maps and had
them leaning against the back of a chair to avoid answering people's questions.
There seemed to be an urgent need for a type of map that would help people make
sense of what they were seeing, to orient themselves, in all senses of the word,
or, if that was asking too much, at least one that would let them measure their
disorientation in the face of the unimaginable. The site around what was the World
Trade Center was manifestly disorienting for obvious reasons, and in a sense, that
was as it should be. The map tried to address the unnecessary confusion and allow
visitors to begin to take stock of what had happened.
AT: How did you make the map?
LK: I thought that we would simply be able to go to various agencies, such as the
Department of Design and Construction, and ask them for relevant maps that they
were drawing and using to put up fences and so on. But we found that just about
every map being drawn in the city was either classified (still being used in the
investigation or recovery effort) or otherwise not available for public use, and so
we were left to our own devices. This meant we had to walk around and document
where every fence, sign, Con Ed electric cable was and then draw it on the map.
A lot of people helped out (especially Janette Kim and Bethia Liu from Princeton,