Proposals flood in for Trade Center memorial
5,200 submissions; all continents represented
From Phil Hirschkorn
CNN Senior Producer
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NEW YORK (CNN) -- The jury that will choose a design for the World Trade Center memorial has received 5,200 submissions, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. announced Thursday.
Submissions came in from 62 nations, including the United States -- which was represented by every state except Alaska -- in what the LMDC calls the largest memorial design competition in history.
From Chile to Czech Republic, from Jamaica to Jordan, and from Singapore to South Africa, every continent on the globe is represented.
"Each and every proposal will be reviewed," said Kevin Rampe, LMDC president. The 13-person jury will view the proposals over the next two months at an undisclosed location in Manhattan and is expected to name about five finalists by mid-September. Entrants will remain anonymous before the jury.
All of the entries -- which were required to be submitted on 30- by 40-inch boards, were "screened for anthrax, bombs and other chemical agents," Rampe said, adding that there were no security problems.
The announced number of entries does not include submissions that might be set aside for not complying with the competition's guidelines. Rampe said that it would be left to the jury to decide how to handle any entries disqualified for technical reasons.
The number of entries dwarfs those submitted to other similar competitions. For example, the Pentagon memorial received 1,126 submissions; the Oklahoma City memorial, 624, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, 1,421.
About 38 percent of the more than 13,600 who registered for the WTC competition submitted designs, a number that is in line with past competitions.
Aniti Contini, LMDC vice president overseeing the memorial competition, said that all of the accepted submissions will be archived with high-resolution digital photographs and could eventually be part of a display at the commemorative museum that is to be built at Ground Zero.
The competition guidelines call for individual, equal remembrances of the 2,792 people killed when two hijacked airliners crashed into the 110-story twin towers. How, or whether, names are listed was left up to the designers' creativity.
The memorial also will honor 224 people killed in the other September 11 crashes of hijacked planes at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and six people killed in the 1993 trade center truck bombing.
The memorial will fit onto a 4.5-acre parcel in the southwest corner of the site -- a setting created by architect Daniel Libeskind, whose master plan was chosen for the rebuilding project earlier this year.
