Tyranny Of The Beam Counters At WTC Memorial

What kind of tool do you use for value engineering a half billion dollars out of your terrorist attack memorial project? Well, if you’re Kevin Rampe, you use a Sciame. [rimshot]
The way Miss Representation sees it, Frank Sciame’s busy doing a “leave no trace” rub-out on the key components of Michael Arad’s original WTC memorial design. Naturally, the details, the process, and any sense of public accountability were the first casualties. But alas, it’s a familiar tale:

In reality, it is exactly what it looks like: the latest in a series of putative decision makers, people accustomed to conniving and obstruction to get their way when not in charge and who then morph into tinpot dictators when they are (because, like, they are so much more talented the those other pretenders) but fail miserably because everyone else is being as obstructionist and conniving as they can be, in hopes that they are given a shot to be the biggest idiot in the room.

Meet Frank Sciame, architect of the WTC Memorial. [missrepresentation.com via curbed]