The various people who ended up working together on the project simultaneously came up with idea in the week following the attack.
Architects John Bennett and Gustavo Bonevardi of PROUN Space Studio distributed their "Project for the Immediate Reconstruction of Manhattan's Skyline".
Artists Julian LaVerdiere and Paul Myoda, who before September 11 were working on the 91st floor of the World Trade Center north tower on a proposed light scupture on the giant radio antenna with Creative Time, conceived the project "Phantom Towers", and were commissioned by The New York Times Magazine an image of the project for its September 23 cover.
Richard Nash Gould, a New York architect, went to the Municipal Art Society with the concept. Gould, a 1972 MArch graduate of Yale, was part of a firm who's SoHo office looked on the World Trade Center. Other projects by Gould include Howard, Darby & Levin in New York City and Polo Sport, Ralph Lauren in New York City.
On September 19, chairman Philip K. Howard wrote to Mayor Rudy Giuliani, asking him "to consider placing two large searchlights near the disaster site, projecting their light straight up into the sky."
The project was originally going to be named Towers of Light until some people complained that emphasized the building destroyed instead of the people killed.
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