In August 2006, the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey began construction on the Memorial and Museum. The Memorial will be located at the World Trade Center site on the site of the two destroyed towers. The winner of the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition was Israeli architect Michael Arad of Handel Architects, a New York and San Francisco-based firm. Arad's design calls for a giant forest of trees with two square pools in the center, each with a gaping hole where the Twin Towers stood. Peter Walker, a landscape architect, is also involved in the project.

The design is consistent with the original Daniel Libeskind master plan that called for the memorial to be 30 feet below street level (originally 70 feet) in a piazza. The design was the only finalist to throw out Libeskind's requirement that buildings overhang the footprints.

A memorial was planned in the immediate aftermath of the attacks and destruction of the World Trade Center to remember both the victims and those involved in rescue. The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation is a non-profit corporation that collects donations for the memorial.