The above-ground museum pavilion, designed by Snøhetta, which will cap the below-ground work being done by Davis Brody Bond Aedas

The museum seems destined to become one of the most remarkable memorial structures in America.

Despite the museum’s unfinished form, a profound sense of what it will be emerges, because this isn’t your typical sort of building. Rather, it’s a processional decent into the gaping hole left by the towers–marked by reminders, both gargantuan and intimate, of what happened on the ground you step across.

Almost no memorial museum is sited where the tragedy actually happened – this museum is the reverse of most.

Usually, the museum houses the exhibit. Here, the exhibit houses the museum

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“In 100 years, there won’t be anyone alive that experienced 9/11,” says Steven Davis, whose architecture firm, Davis Brody Bond Aedas, is designing the Museum

“What will you tell them? And how will you tell them, to make them understand what happened?”

The unfinished site, is slated for completion on September 11, 2012–a scant two years from now, and eleven years after the Twin Towers fell.

Via FastCoDesign