Tribute World Trade Center is located less than 50 feet from Ground Zero directly across from the World Trade Center (WTC) site. Its mission, defined by the September 11th Families Association, is to transmit the voices of the 9/11 community—victims’ families, rescue workers, attack survivors, volunteers, and downtown residents.

This 6,000-square-foot, 2-story, visitor and education center is comprised of 5 galleries featuring permanent and changing exhibitions, interactive displays, film, and related public programs such as the Center’s walking tours of the WTC site. Images, audio, video, and an eight-foot-high model of the World Trade Center towers interactively orient visitors to the vibrant spirit of the WTC community and foreshadow what was lost. A series of floor-to-ceiling timeline units invite visitors to travel a 40-foot long corridor and actually `walk' through the events of February 26, 1993 and September 11, 2001. On one side of the corridor, casework display objects carried by survivors. On the opposite wall is a mural that begins as an expanse of blue, just like the sky that day, and then gradually fills with missing-person posters, stretching from floor to ceiling at the far end of the gallery. Images, artifacts, audio clips, and video are also used throughout to pay tribute to the many individuals and organizations that rushed to the site and worked tirelessly for months on the recovery effort. A deformed piece of steel from the WTC site anchors the next gallery, devoted to rescue and recovery operations, which leads to a more contemplative gallery in which the names of all victims are inscribed in glass and projected on a wall. This gallery also houses mementos, keepsakes, and tributes sent by victims’ relatives.

The designers were also responsible for a comprehensive environmental graphics, donor recognition, and wayfinding sign program.