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From Martin Filler at The New York Review of Books…

I wept, but about what precisely I cannot say. Much to my amazement, after having done everything possible to shut out the ubiquitous maudlin press coverage that engulfed the tenth anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks, I visited Michael Arad’s National September 11 Memorial in New York City—which was dedicated exactly a decade after the disaster—to find that it impressed me at once as a sobering, disturbing, heartbreaking, and overwhelming masterpiece.

Arad’s inexorably powerful, enigmatically abstract pair of abyss-like pools, which demarcate the foundations of the lost Twin Towers, comes as a surprise to those of us who doubted that the chaotic and desultory reconstruction of Ground Zero could yield anything of lasting value. It is generally held that great architecture requires the participation of a great client, but just how this stunning result emerged from such a fraught and contentious process will take some time for critics and historians to sort out. More…

From Dezeen…

Vienna Design Week 2011: a rotating arm deposits spirals of quartz sand on the showroom floor at crystal company Lobmeyr in Vienna this week, thanks to Canadian designer Philippe Malouin.

Time is a quality that makes Lobmeyr so special.

Not only do their glass objects posses timeless designs, independent of changing fashions, but the calibre of the crystal itself means they stand the test of time. Great investments of time are taken in producing and decorating the crystalware, up to 100 hours for a single object, and this investment differentiates Lobmeyr from other glass manufacturers. We have used the theme of time here to illustrate how unique Lobmeyr is.

The flow of sand through an hourglass is traditionally used to keep track of elapsed time. It is also physical representation of the fine line between the past and the future. Through the machine in this room, the deposition of sand forms not minutes and hours on a clock face but abstract and changing patterns, illustrating the link between time and decoration. The sand also holds a physical connection with Lobmeyr, since it is the raw material from which the crystal is created. More…