Interesting. The Gutter does a quick handicap of the “winners” and “losers” in the new Frank Sciame-redesign of the WTC Memorial.
There’s one overlooked/surprise winner: Santiago Calatrava, who, the gutter points out, got the Snohetta Freedom Center-turned-Information Center removed from the northeast corner of the Memorial Quadrant, where it had previously interfered with his own soaring crown roast of a train station. [Of course, that must’ve been a pretty short meeting, since Sciame is also working for Calatrava.]
The “winner” to no one’s surprise at all, though, is the Port Authority. Another feature I haven’t seen discussed is in the drawing above: something labeled “Memorial Plaza.” That just happens to be the title of one of the six original rebuilding concepts the Port Authority commissioned from Beyer Blinder Belle way back in July 2002. It was the outcry against those six concepts, titled “Memorial [choose one: Plaza, Square, Triangle, Garden, Park, Promenade].” The original concepts and program can be seen here. Memorial Plaza is below. Look familiar?
Ouroussoff today lamented the lack of progress and vision in the WTC site rebuilding and in the Memorial design process both. But maybe we’ve been looking at this wrong from the start. If you’re Port Authority, this whole thing looks to be moving along exactly as planned.
WTC Memorial 2.0: And the Winner Is… [gutter]
“Today the LMDC released its six concepts…” [greg.org, 7/16/02]
Six Plans for WTC Site Unveiled (7/16/02) [newyork.construction.com]