Like some architecture critical version of Bobby Ewing. [Or is it Pamela? Whichever.] In this week’s New Yorker, Paul Goldberger writes about the horrible dream he just had: Pataki and the Port Authority were railroading their 10mm sf uber alles program through at the WTC site, resulting in pointless, tenantless, characterless office buildings with marginal cultural facilities wedged in around their base, and a memorial that was little more than a front yard for some jingoistic, politicized ego-booster called the Freedom Tower.
Not only that, but Goldberger’s own master plan–an “Eiffel Tower for the 21st Century”; acres of experimental, affordable, and much-in-demand housing by innovative young architects; built around a deep, solemn, Libeskind-esque void of a memorial–had inexplicably not moved any closer to realization.
How did this happen? [note to any SVA Parsons students, apologies for making you imagine your dean naked.]
A New Beginning/ Why We Should Build Apartments at Ground Zero [ny’er, via cut-n-pasting monkey at wiredny]
Previously: “The Eiffel Tower for the 21st Century” [PG on Studio360 01/13/2003]
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the making of, by greg allen