Michael Arad Quotes

You can just never desist. You have to always push back, whatever the pressures put on you.

When I was in the Army, the unit I served in, you could never stop. It was a volunteer unit, and there was a fairly high rate of attrition. The people who stayed through are the people who were either great at it or the people who just didn’t know how to stop. And I fell into that second category.

When I started this project, I was a young architect. I was very apprehensive about any changes to the design. Whether I wanted to or not, I learned that you can accept some changes to its form without compromising its intent. But it’s a leap of faith that I didn’t want to make initially – to put it mildly.

No rendering can really simulate the way the light bounces off the bronze panel. From some angles, it’s almost a mirror, and from others it’s a matte surface.

It was really a magical moment, to see this idea that’s in your head.

It sounds really over the top to say you’re responsible for the city of New York, but I do feel responsibility to the city of New York, to this country, to people everywhere. So many people were affected by the events of September 11, and I feel this is one of the ways that that event will be understood and defined.