It is an admission of fear and a victory for the terrorists. We need something proud and significant to replace what was taken away.
Michael, I couldn't agree more - well put! I thought this piece in the
New York Press summed it up nicely:
"Don MacLeod
Towering Fiasco
The six proposals for rebuilding Ground Zero all have one thing in common: they are duller than downtown Duluth.
Maybe it was the fear of offending the grieving or maybe it was the rush to get something on the drawing board right away. No matter why. The six versions (Newsday's got images here) delivered to the public as "starting points" are tame concoctions that do nothing to solve a bigger problem than replacing lost office space. Not one of these designs gives New York back a landmark. (One of the designs even unimaginatively samples the distinctive design of San Francisco's Transamerica Bldg.)
In the earnest effort to replace rentable real estate and, fittingly, create a memorial, the architects ignored the most important design goal: The new complex must become a new symbol of New York. The Twin Towers, much maligned at their birth, became signature buildings with time, as utterly New Yorkish as the Eiffel Tower is Parisian or the Colosseum is Roman. After 9/11, all New Yorkers were startled to see how ordinary the skyline looked without the WTC. The towers were always the first things you'd see coming back to the city from the airport or from a road trip, signifying home. Without the towers, it is hard, from a distance, to distinguish downtown Manhattan from any other middling prosperous American city.
The very first order of architectural business should have been to make a memorable addition to the skyline. It needs to be something dazzling. These lukewarm proposals miss the mark. They don't improve the skyline, they clutter it. These blueprints plod along. The models look the headquarters for a credit card company in Wilmington, DE, instead of the grand renaissance they should suggest. This project must be a classic of urban design, as memorable and unique as the Empire State Bldg., the Brooklyn Bridge, Chrysler or Rockefeller Center. New York deserves it.
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, there was plenty of talk of New York "coming back" and showing the world that as a city we would not be kept down. What we need more than umpteen square feet of office space is a symbol of a defiant and unstoppable New York. Stirring sentiments, certainly, and now it's literally put-up time. However horrific the circumstances were that created the opportunity to remake downtown, we have a chance to make a bold and brilliant statement, and for architects to reach for an audacious and exhilarating expression of New York soul. What we don't need is realty. What we really need is poetry. "
