In October 2001, three weeks after the horrific 9/11 attacks in New York, I stood within Ground Zero, the surface still hot beneath my insulated boots the smoke and steam still rising tangled wreckage all about, protruding against the less ruined structures beyond. The drive is for all time to ensure that in remembering, humanity seeks to inform future generations of what happened, and to provoke a determination to commit to the theme of ‘never again’.Īs a reporter and as a citizen, I have stood at both ends of this equation in micro and macro circumstances.

The needs of survivors have been uppermost in the minds of those who seek to enshrine remembrance in an enduringly physical, built statement. Contemplation has always been at the heart of these potent sites of man’s inhumanity to man. In the charged contexts that follow major atrocity and disaster, architecture is key to finding a means of recovery and redemption, writes Jon Snowįrom Berlin to Phnom Penh, from New York to the Rwandan capital of Kigali, remembrance has become central to the process of recovery from major atrocities.