In September 2002, I heard on french TV the interview of fireman James Hanlon, after that the film directed by Jules & Gedeon Naudet and himself had just been aired. Here is what he answered when asked about what to do on Ground Zero:
“Personally, I’d love for the Twin Towers to be built back the way they were (...) As a New Yorker I miss the sight of them (...) I’d look up from anywhere in New York and would see them (...) If i had my way, I’d build them back”.

A bit later I read Rudy Giuliani’s essay about Ground Zero in Time magazine, the Sept 9 issue. In substance this is what this man said :
“I am convinced that ground zero must first and foremost be a memorial. All other decisions should flow from that goal (...) An appropriately large and enduring tribute at the site will remind future generations of that commitment (...) It should be visible for a great distance to demonstrate the spirit of those who gave their lives to defend freedom (...) If it were up to me, I’d devote the entire 6.5 hectares to the memorial”

Those two men’s statements committed me into what I have done, and have enlightened my path. James Hanlon’s and Rudy Giuliani’s points of view are almost opposed on what they consider that should be done on the WTC Site.
But what stroke me in what they said was that roads apparently diverging could in fact lead to the same junction.
From this paradox could come the solution.
And this solution did correspond to the vision which had grown on me, day after day, during one year.
Right from the beginning, I have had the conviction that the Twin Towers should rise again in the skies of America, just because New York without them is simply not New York anymore.

In the first place, I believe that no one should ever forget what happened when seeing them, and that the new buildings should primarily be an homage of respect, love and remembrance dedicated to the innocents who were murdered in the attack, and to the heroes who perished while trying to save those who could no longer be saved.

But at the same time I also firmly believe that those towers have to become again a place where the sound of life is humming, where vitality radiates again, where activity peaks.

Because it is the best way to prove barbarity defeated, to claim high and loud that the will for destruction lost its cause, and that Hope and Life eventually won over it.

Therefore the new Twins in my view should symbolize Remembrance as well as Energy and Hope.
This is why in terms of look I have covered the former walls of visible steel girders under sheets of glass, mirror-like, tinted golden from the ground zero level, and ranging subtly from gold to deep blue, up to the top, where they would merge with the heavens.

- Gold is a symbol for energy, for strength, for life that burns in every beating heart. This energy of life bursting out of this devastated soil, like corn in summer, a Renaissance which no winter could ever stop.
- Blue is for hope, and for remembrance of the souls of the victims.

And the whole structure would reflect day after day the blue sky and the passing of sometimes dark clouds, an image of life as it is indeed.

At a certain level in each of the Towers, an immense space, many storeys high, located at the very spot where the planes crashed, would remain empty, sheltered from the open air by front walls of glass, transparent and untinted this time, as opposed to the blue mirror-like glass covering at those levels the rest of the towers.
Those two monumental memorials would home the names of those who died, listed and engraved in the marble of their giant rear walls. Those places would be seen through transparency of glass at day. At night, they would shine like a lighthouse’s beam, a perpetual light guiding us to remembering, so that no one can ever forget.
They would be a separate space of rest and silence from the Towers’ bodies, full of life and activity.

I believe it would be a correct way to bring together the duty to go on living and the need for silence and prayer in respect of those who went.

Because I believe that their souls are there, with us forever, and they expect us to do justice to what has become Ground Zero, where we must give them a home and a shelter.

Concerning that last point, New York is the place which homes the Statue of Liberty, and freedom of thinking, freedom of loving, freedom of living are precisely what September 11th attack intended to make us lose.
This is why I have imagined a giant copper-sheeted hand, reminding the Statue of Liberty’s one waving up her torch, but this time blossoming out of the mourning ground, in a gentle gesture of offering, giving birth to a bird to rise up and fly away towards the sky.
I have chosen the symbol of the dove carrying its olive branch, because I believe this is the most universal, the most understandable key symbol opposing barbarity, bigotry, hatred, fanatism and violence: it would show our own determination for peace, and our faith in life, this precious life which we believe is sacred.

I have imagined that this hand and this bird, alone on a vast plaza fronting the Twins, would emerge out of an evocation of the ruins of the late towers, those broken, tortured spires of steel which stood bravely against the dust on the devastated site, as to signify that if they had not entirely crumbled, it was because they wanted to be kept, as a testimony for generations to come.