Jessica Jamroz, BA '99

Making meaning

Though she’s relatively young, Jessica Jamroz, BA ’99 has had unusual occasion to make meaning from and reconstruct after tragedy.

Architect with the firm of internationally known architect Frederic Schwartz, Jamroz has worked on major 9/11 memorials and on post-Katrina rebuilding efforts in New Orleans.  Her first professional encounter with 9/11 was as project architect for a Schwartz-designed memorial for 109 people from Westchester County (NY) who died in the World Trade Center attacks.  Completed in September 2006, the piece, The Rising, consists of 109 80-foot stainless steel strands that merge as they twist upward and 109 granite stones with quotations from victims’ families.  “What’s beautiful is that you can see the symbolic unification of 109 separate strands if you walk inside the piece,” Jamroz says.

Scheduled for completion in spring 2008, Jamroz co-authored her second 9/11 project with Schwartz and is again serving as project architect.  Empty Sky will honor the 744 people from New Jersey who died on 9/11.  It will feature an earthen berm transacted by 30 ft. by 200 ft. marine-grade stainless steel walls covered with names of the dead.  The sculpture will be set up on a center line to Ground Zero, so viewers looking through the walls will gaze directly at where the towers once stood.

Both memorials emerged from competitions juried by victims’ families and professionals from the field.  In each case, “the families unanimously selected our designs,” Jamroz notes.  “We worked with the families to make sure the designs met their standards.”  Though Jamroz finds interest in other projects’ meaning and design criteria, she says that the memorials came with their own special directive:  “They’re about giving families a place to go, a place of memory when they don’t know where their loved ones are.  It’s most rewarding to speak with families.  They’re so happy and sad and thankful – it’s a very intense feeling.”  Jamroz was even invited by New Jersey officials to visit Ground Zero this year with 9/11 families.  “Time doesn’t matter there, there is only remembrance,” she says.

Interdisciplinary approach

Jamroz’s training at UB offered her “invaluable” hands-on preparation for what she’s doing today.  “The School of Architecture had a great shop facility,” she recalls, “and the Sculpture Department had a casting facility.  I could use either of those and take an interdisciplinary approach to my work.”  She also mentions Professor Frank Fantauzzi, who gave her latitude to attempt full-scale installations involving the casting process.  “If I’d not had the experience building installations, I wouldn’t have been as prepared for how to make the Westchester memorial stand up,” she says.

Helping New Orleans recover

Her work at UB in environmental design stood her in good stead during the three months she recently spent in New Orleans with a team working on recovery and rebuilding plans for two of the 13 districts that make up the city framework.  “Lots of places are still struggling because of the lack of public infrastructure or drainage problems,” she explains.  In addition, though a significant portion of the city’s world-renowned and historically significant housing stock is unsound, “you don’t want to just raze houses that have such historic importance.”

Jamroz and the team tried to determine what public places and utilities should be recovered first.  “We did lots of community outreach and assessment of conditions,” she says.  Underpinning their work were principles of rebuilding in sustainable ways.  One of the reasons New Orleans flooded, for example, was because its levee system wasn’t strong enough.  Thus, says Jamroz, “A first step is to put back the levees and ensure their security from future floods.”  The team ultimately delivered a list of recommendations for the first projects that should be implemented to help recreate the city.  “Many of our recommendations for this plan dealt with principals for sustainable and affordable housing, ways to revitalize commercial corridors that have fallen in despair and how to generate other potential economic and social engines to bring people back to New Orleans.” 

As she continues in her professional path, Jamroz plans to tread the line she’s carved out for herself, where “architecture meets the arts.”

Written by Grace Lazzara
April 2007

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