"Garden of Lights," a design by Cornell University undergraduate Sean Corriel and two others, was chosen as one of eight finalists in a competition for a memorial at the site of the former World Trade Center in New York City.

The finalists were announced Nov. 19 by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. (LMDC), which sponsored the competition, drawing 5,201 entries from 63 nations and 49 states -- making the memorial competition the largest in recent history.

An exhibition of the top eight designs opened that same day at the World Financial Center's Winter Garden in lower Manhattan. The designs also are posted on the Web site http://www.wtcsitememorial.org . The LMDC, which is seeking public comment, is expected to announce the winning design by the end of the year. Finalists were asked by LMDC not to comment publicly on their designs or selection so as not to influence the final choice.

Corriel is a fifth-year landscape architecture major in Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Currently working on an honors thesis for his undergraduate degree at Cornell, he plans to enter a master's program in architecture after he graduates. He grew up in Huntington, N.Y., on Long Island, then moved to New York City.

Associate Professor Kathryn Gleason, chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture at Cornell, commented: "To be one of the final eight is incredible for him, but none of us are surprised. He's a great design student, inventive and reflective."

"Kudos to Sean for being a finalist!" said Paula Horrigan, Cornell associate professor of landscape architecture and Corriel's adviser. "His poetic and moving entry vividly honors and affirms life and stands confidently among a group of inspiring entries. This is a remarkable achievement that will be life changing and life challenging for him."

"[This] is a tremendous honor for Sean and his team," said Nina Bassuk, a Cornell professor of horticulture who collaborated on the final submission. "The original design concept developed into a proposed landscape that could actually grow and thrive in New York City."The "Garden of Lights" pictured and described on the Web site is intended to emphasize the link, real and metaphorical, between earth and sky, life, death and memory. Proposed is a three-level memorial. The top level is to be a garden that suggests prairies and orchards, continually renewed by guest gardeners from around the world. The middle level is divided into two rooms illuminated by shafts of light. One room contains an "offering path," a stream with floating rose petals, to which visitors may add their own rose. One wall is to be forged from the salvaged metal of the towers, while behind it will rest the unidentified remains of those who perished following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The lowest level will be a glass-enclosed space in which a constellation formed by 2,982 shafts of light from above illuminates the same number of altars below. Engraved on the slanted, circular tops of the altars, which are waist-high columns, will be the names of all who died in the attacks, handwritten by family members. The lights represent extinguished lives instantly reborn as "stars." The designers propose that the garden part of the memorial be open only from 8:46 to 10:29 a.m. every day, marking the time between the first plane's hitting the first of the Twin Towers and the second tower's collapse. The rest of the memorial would remain open all day.

The designers of the "Garden of Lights" proposal are Corriel; Pierre David, a faculty member at the ƒcole d'Architecture de Clermont-Ferrand in France and at the New York/Paris Shape-of-Two-Cities program administered by Columbia University; and Jessica Kmetovic, a fifth-year student in the bachelor of architecture program at the California College of Arts and Crafts. They began working on the project independently, following the study-abroad program.

Two other finalists, Joseph Karadin and Hsin-Yi Wu, who were involved in the design for "Suspending Memory," are Cornell alumni, both B. Arch. '97.