Michael Arad

Michael Arad was born in 1969 in London

Arad was born in London in 1969, where his father, Moshe Arad, was serving as an Israeli diplomat. His father later became Israel's ambassador to the United States and Mexico. He grew up in Jerusalem and attended the Hebrew University Secondary School.

He served in the IDF in the Golani Brigade reconnaissance unit. He then earned a bachelor's degree in government from Dartmouth College and a master's degree in architecture from the Georgia Institute of Technology. In 1998 he did his internship at an architecture firm in Israel.

In 1999 he moved to New York and worked at Kohn Pedersen Fox and then at Leclere Associate Architects. He later worked for the New York City Housing Authority, designing police stations. Since 2004 he has been a partner at Handel Architects.

In 2003 his design, Reflecting Absence, was chosen as one of 8 finalists from 5,201 entries in the competition for the September 11 memorial. He revised it with landscape architect Peter Walker after criticism, and it won in January 2004. The design places two sunken pools where the Twin Towers stood, and the memorial opened in 2011.

Arad lives in New York with his wife and their children.