British Memorial Garden

The 67 Britons killed in the 11 September terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York will be commemorated in a giant granite sculpture by the Turner prize-winning artist Anish Kapoor.

Kapoor, who was unsuccessful with his proposals for a memorial to Diana, Princess of Wales, beat 11 other artists, including Sir Anthony Caro, Julian Opie, Richard Deacon and Antony Gormley, to win the commission. His 19.5ft sculpture, called Unity , will be carved from a block of black granite to form the centrepiece of a proposed memorial garden in Hanover Square in lower Manhattan, near the site of the twin towers. It will feature the mirrored surfaces and reflections seen in many of his previous works.

Kapoor said yesterday that the block would have a vertical chamber of three feet by eight feet by two feet carved into it. He said: "The inner chamber is polished to give a mirrored surface. The chamber reflects light so as to form a column, which hovers, ghost-like, in the void of the stone. This very physically monolithic object then appears to create within itself an ephemeral reflection akin to an eternal flame."

The decision to appoint Kapoor was announced yesterday by the British Memorial Garden Trust in New York, which has raised some $3.5m (£2m) to pay for the memorial. The plan has been approved by the New York Art Commission, which has final say on art proposed for the city's open spaces. The first phase of the garden project is expected to begin this spring, with the finished garden opening in the summer of next year.

Kapoor was born in Bombay in 1954 but has lived in Britain since the 1970s. He won the Turner Prize in 1991 and was made a CBE last year. His large-scale works have been seen at galleries including the Hayward on the South Bank and at the Millennium Dome. He is providing the colossal polished steel centrepiece for the Millennium Park in Chicago, due to open this summer. The public fell in love with his giant red trumpet sculpture, Marsyas , when it was in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall.

Kapoor sculpture to honour Twin Towers victims