Ric Burns, filmmaker: “I have grave concerns that we were catapulted into this process a decade too soon, but given the timetable, it has been heroic. This jury has a much better chance of being right than anybody else. And if they’re wrong, it certainly will have been a noble failure.”

Related Stories Future Past:

Alexander Gorlin, architect who is doing Libeskind’s apartment: “One pool is too abstract, and two doesn’t add anything but redundancy. This is trying to evoke a ruin without any remnant of it.”

Eric Fischl, artist: “It still saddens the hell out of me that the jury has turned away from the human form to express the human condition.”

Richard Meier, architect: “I would have incorporated pieces of the tower. Anyone who visited the site before it was cleared, the image is in our memory.”

Louis Nelson, designer, Korean War Veterans Memorial: “It’s an adequate placeholder. But years down the line, people will find it’s not satisfying, not healing, and they’ll have to rethink the memorial.”

Tom Wolfe, author: “Where is the memorial to the firemen? This was a human drama, and it requires something that recalls the human beings who perished. Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial started this minimalist trend, but so many people overlook the fact that though not figurative, it is representational. It’s a gigantic tombstone incised with the names of the dead.”

Related:

• Archive: “The Big Question”
• Articles by Jada Yuan
• Table of Contents: January 19, 2004 issue of New York | Subscribe!