A museum supporting the memorial associated with the September 11 terrorist attack is now open following a dedication ceremony to mark the building’s completion last Friday.

Located on the western edge of the World Trade Centre memorial site, the museum will display monumental artefacts linked to the events of 9/11 as well as an earlier 1993 attack, and will present stories of loss, compassion, reckoning, and recovery as well as documenting and exploring the impact and continuing significance of the attacks on individual lives and local, national and international communities.

Designed by Davis Brody Bond, the museum is below a memorial plaza and acre-size reflecting pools located on the original footprints of the twin towers. Visitors will enter through a pavilion which will house an auditorium and a private room for victims’ families.

The lowest level at bedrock features the original west slurry wall which is supported by a counter fort system and the remaining west slurry wall with a concrete reinforced liner. Original box column remnants which are visible and accessible to visitors ring core exhibition spaces and will provide a ‘footprint’ of the original tower.

Lend Lease was the construction manager for the new museum and worked with three other contractors hired by the City of New York following completion of the memorial (which opened on September 11, 2011) to oversee and coordinate the clean-up operation and recovery operation on the site.

Attending the dedication, United States president Barack Obama said the museum’s completion marked a “historic moment” and that those who visited would find it to be a “profound and moving experience.”

“Here at this Memorial, this Museum, we come together,” Obama said. “We stand in the footprints of two mighty towers, graced by the rush of eternal waters. We look into the faces of nearly 3,000 innocent souls… Here, we tell their story so that generations yet unborn will never forget.”

Lend Lease Americas chief executive officer Bob McNamara said the new museum represented a place of remembrance of victims as well as those who risked their lives to save others.

“As the world turns its attention to the National September 11 Memorial Museum, we at Lend Lease take great pride in the monumental accomplishment of completing this nationally significant project,” he said.

A dedication period during which the museum will be open 24 hours a day for six straight days began at 6 p.m. on Friday to recognise the around the clock efforts of recovery workers in the attack’s aftermath.