THE CHALLENGE: In Woods's graphic ruminations, ascents up an ever-rising tower provide pilgrims with an ongoing chance to contemplate 9/11.

Woods, an architecture visionary who lives, draws, and teaches just blocks from the Trade Center site, proposes a structure perpetually under construction, a "World Center" symbolizing regeneration and continual change. It is the tallest building in the world and will, as it grows, always be the tallest. It is a project with a precise beginning-September 11, 2001-but no ending.

The main feature of the 39 million-square-foot structure is a vertical memorial park called the Ascent, dedicated to reflecting and building on the experience of 9/11 and after. There are four ways to make the Ascent. The Pilgrimage is for the devout and involves a monthlong traversal of a difficult vertical path through a series of Stations. The Quest consists of a weeklong series of climbs up near-vertical faces, ledges, resting places, and camps. On the Trip, vacationers will spend two or three days among a series of platforms, lifts, escalators, interactive displays, hotels, restaurants, vistas, and educational entertainment. The half-day Tour consists of a rapid elevator ride to the summit of the Park, pausing at commemorative displays.

Atop the Ascent is the Summit, a community of pilgrims, climbers, vacationers, tourists, and World Center workers. They will join scholars, students, artists, philosophers, and others who have devoted themselves to the study of 9/11. The community crowns the World Center with a continuously evolving network of interior and exterior spaces and serves as a window into past, present, and future worlds, and as a place where arguments can be informed by new perspectives and possibilities.

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