March 03, 2004

Michael Arad Interview at Arch. Record

[via Archinect] WTC Memorial designer Michael Arad discusses his original idea, design process, and experience in a too-brief interview for Architectrual Record Magazine. Arad's reworked proposal (with Peter Walker) attempts a return to his original vision, in which very clear, stark voids pierce the horizontal plane of the plaza. More and more, the experience sounds similar to Michael Heizer's Nort, East, South, West installation at Dia Beacon....
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Posted by greg allen at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

In the WTC Memorial Kitchen: Still Baking, Lots of Cooks

The NY Observer's Blair Golson reports on conflict brewing around Michael Arad's design for the WTC Memorial. Apparently, he doesn't want to be the malleable vassal the Jury and the LMDC had in mind when they chose his proposal. Some accuse him of pursuing "unlimited control [over the Memorial design], without any checks on his responsibilities." They also say Arad threatened to take his displeasures public to gain negotiating leverage. This, coming from an anonymous LMDC source involved in the...
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Posted by greg allen at 11:04 AM | Comments (0)

February 27, 2004

On "Ephemeral Elegance" at the WTC Site

Read David Dunlap's evocative account of the "temporary" architecture--the PATH station, footbridges and viewing wall--that surrounds and inhabits the World Trade Center site. These structures, "erected in a hurry," are utilitarian first, Dunlap notes, but they still sometimes "approach the sublime." While I stayed consciously uncommitted on the exact form they would take, Dunlap's experience sounds like a reasonable approximation of what I imagined the paths of my own memorial proposal would be like. Fred Conrad's picture of SHoP's...
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Posted by greg allen at 10:05 PM | Comments (0)

WTC Memorial Juror to speak at Dartmouth, 3/2/04

[Thank Hugh] "Memory and the Monument after 9/11: Deliberations at Ground Zero" is the title of the presentation by WTC Memorial Juror, Prof. James Young, at Dartmouth College. Young is as close as we've got to a professional memorialist; he's a veteran juror and adviser to memorial design processes around the world, and he is the author of several incisive books on remembering the Holocaust, including The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning. You'll be hard-pressed to find an...
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Posted by greg allen at 09:39 PM | Comments (0)

February 19, 2004

All 5,201 WTC Memorial Competition Submissions Online

Get this man a graphic designer. The LMDC has released scanned images of all 5,201 Memorial Competition submissions, browsable by country and state, or searchable by last name. Mark Wahlberg's proposal is here, and here is Ross Bleckner's. John Bennett's and Paul Myoda's separate proposals (they did the Tribute in Light). Mark Dion, Brian Tolle (he did the Irish Hunger Memorial in BPC). Here's Antoine Predock, Arquitectonica. Peter Walker (who got it anyway, just not with this proposal). Marc Quinn...
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Posted by greg allen at 01:29 PM | Comments (0)

January 22, 2004

"El silencio es tambien musica."

That could be a reference to John Cage, but it's actually Santiago Calatrava discussing his design for a transportation hub at the WTC site. The dual-winged design will be unveiled today. For images and details, see the Port Authority press release and Calatrava's PowerPoint presentation, David Dunlap's reporting or Muschamp's free verse reaction in The Times, and a pile of images from Yahoo News....
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Posted by greg allen at 09:32 AM | Comments (0)

Peter Walker, "Landscape Doctor"

The NY Times profiles Peter Walker, the dean of modernist US landscape design (and ex-dean of Harvard and Berkeley arch. schools). Not a lot of news, but he does cite Donald Judd and Carl Andre as artistic inspirations. 2 pts for taste, but the problem with Arad's original plaza was its unremitting Andre-ness. His own firm's memorial proposal was "a glassy wall with the victims' and heroes' names etched within."...
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Posted by greg allen at 09:27 AM | Comments (0)

January 19, 2004

WTC Memorial Jurors Speak--and Design

The NYT's Glenn Collins and David Dunlap have a transfixing and revelatory article about details of the WTC Memorial Jury's deliberations and process for the first time. Twelve of the thirteen jurors spoke with the reporters. It turns out even the jurors were underwhelmed by the revised designs their finalists came up with. And Martin Puryear's dismissal of Michael Kimmelman's call for elitism to save us is right on. Of course, Felix Salmon's analysis is also right on, that it...
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Posted by greg allen at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)

January 14, 2004

Revised WTC Memorial design leaked a day early

After a German press agency forgot to attach an embargo notice to them, the NY Times published images of the heavily revised Arad/Walker design for the World Trade Center Memorial a day early. There are quite a few changes. Perhaps the most significant is the addition of a large (60-100,00SF, 1.5-2.5x the tower footprints themselves) underground space to house artifacts from the attacks. But that's not all: Access to the 30' high space is via a ramp along the exposed...
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Posted by greg allen at 02:04 AM | Comments (0)

January 06, 2004

Ugh. Maya Lin Strikes Again

The worst design of the worst set of finalists was just chosen for the World Trade Center Memorial. Michael Arad's barren, sunken pools, "Reflecting Absence," was a favorite of Maya Lin, according to an unnamed LMDC source who was heavily spinning the NY Post's William Neuman against the design Sunday. The only positive aspect of the proposal: it was the only finalist to call for alterations to fellow Israeli Daniel Libeskind's proposed cultural buildings, including eliminating that one museum...
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Posted by greg allen at 05:19 PM | Comments (0)

WTC WTF?

According to Herbert Muschamp, he has discovered the way to "liberate the site from the clutches of politicians, architects, their publicists and other unqualified figures who have presumed to speak in history's name. And it could slow the breakneck redevelopment timetable imposed by Gov. George E. Pataki." That, or he's completely lost it. On the day when the LMDC Jury is set to announce the "winning" Memorial design, Muschamp waxes poetic--without any actual facts or reporting to back up his...
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Posted by greg allen at 09:31 AM | Comments (0)

January 05, 2004

WTC Memorial: And then there were two, or three, or...

On the last day of the year, the Times' reporter on the World Trade Center beat, David Dunlap, shared a byline with Herbert Muschamp to report that the Jury has narrowed their choices to two or three final designs for the Memorial. The reported choices: "Passages of Light," by Gisela Baurmann, Sawad Brooks and Jonas Coersmeier, aka the "Memorial Cloud," and "Garden of Lights," by Pierre David, Sean Corriel and Jessica Kmetovic, aka the apple orchard/prairie. Michael Arad's barren "Remembering...
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Posted by greg allen at 02:11 AM | Comments (0)

November 26, 2003

Maya Lin: The Problem, not The Solution for the WTC Memorial

While I've been contemplating what to write about the WTC Memorial, most of the ideas I've wanted to write about have been put out there. At least they have now that Clay Risen's article in the Observer lays into the stifling influence of Maya Lin's minimalist memorialism. It's a topic near to my heart (I complained last year that the Pentagon Memorial competition had "far too many Lins"). Even so, Risen pulls his punches, and I underestimated the spread...
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Posted by greg allen at 06:12 PM | Comments (0)

November 20, 2003

From The WTC Memorial Finalists: The Media Event

The piece I wish I'd written in immediate response to the eight WTC Memorial Finalists: Christopher Hawthorne's article on Slate. What I'm on the record saying in the mean time: from my debut appearance in USA Today. [FWIW, I actually said, "30, 50, or 100 years from now." I'm more tweaked they didn't give the URL. Damned editors...] [Elizabeth, is that what you mean by "kicker"?] A man in need of a haircut--or at least baseball cap with his URL...
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Posted by greg allen at 10:17 AM | Comments (0)

November 19, 2003

Some WTC Finalists Google Stunt That Took Way Too Much Time

Knowing what's going to happen to these peoples' Google search results tomorrow, I thought I'd take a little search engine snapshot, from before they were Finalists....
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Posted by greg allen at 07:11 PM | Comments (0)

Spaces Made Sacred, my proposal for the WTC Memorial

Tens of thousands of people pursuing lives, professions, dreams, duties, of their own choosing—following their own paths. Ordinary people in the course of a typical morning, going about their daily lives. Individual paths running parallel, for a time—familiar strangers with the same commute, travelers on an airplane, a close-knit rescue company. Paths converging on a common destination. 3,016 individuals whose paths were senselessly cut short by terrorist attacks. The space made sacred through tragic loss, space where they passed...
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Posted by greg allen at 10:06 AM | Comments (0)

Memorial Elements: Paths, Portraits, Destinations

The Memorial will reconstitute the space made sacred, the actual and accurate paths taken by the 3,016 individuals killed on September 11, 2001 and February 26,1993. In Concept, it comprises three major elements: Paths, Portraits, and Destinations. The Memorial’s Form will be determined by mapping each individual’s information —compiled from authoritative data sources, gleaned from family and survivor recollection—onto the plan and elevation schema of the original World Trade Center site. This Form will be transposed and integrated into...
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Posted by greg allen at 06:02 AM

November 14, 2003

On Exhibiting the WTC Memorial Competition Entries

I posted about this on my WTC Discussion sublog. An NYT article mentions the daunting challenge of exhibiting 5,201 poster-sized entries in one place. It's not about space constraints, it's about information architecture and the user experience. [Thanks, Gothamist!]...
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Posted by greg allen at 12:51 PM | Comments (0)

November 10, 2003

The WTC Memorial Finalist That Wasn't

[via Archinect] Fred Bernstein's proposal for a World Trade Center Memorial has been online for a while. (I first saw--and posted about-- it when Timothy Noah featured it on Slate way back in Feb. 2002.) . Back then, it was an unexpectedly restrained, welcome alternative to the maudlin or ludicrous ideas that were being floated at the time. (Remember that Max Protetch show in January? I'm sure most of the participants now hope you don't.) Now it turns out...
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Posted by greg allen at 10:24 AM | Comments (0)

October 11, 2003

I Report, You Decide: Speaking with a former WTC juror

Friday, I met an architecture professional who was on the LMDC jury last summer to select the architects for the World Trade Center site design study. We spoke about the Memorial Competition, details of which were familiar to this person. The juror was deliberately cagey, but said the Memorial jury was down to ten proposals: "And when it gets down to ten, the lines start to sharpen." Asked about the timeline, this person said, "very soon," but when I bounced...
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Posted by greg allen at 11:01 AM | Comments (0)

October 10, 2003

Discussing the WTC Memorial

The first rule of the World Trade Center Memorial Competition is don't discuss the World Trade Center Memorial Competition. OK, technically, it's the second rule, and it actually applies to publicly identifying your own design proposal, but whatever. Many entrants and many more followers of the Competition are discussing it, though, on multiple venues online. Most voices are earnest; some are a bit weary or cynical. Some are pained, or painfully critical; some are self-aggrandizing to a disturbing degree. For...
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Posted by greg allen at 01:27 AM | Comments (0)

October 01, 2003

Australian Mall out, Architecture Mall in at WTC Site

A couple of weeks ago, the Port Authority bought out Westfield America's lease for the retail areas of the WTC site, temporarily emptying one chair at the master plan negotiating table. The square peg mall developers from Australia just couldn't accept that South Street Seaport, SoHo, Times Square, Rockefeller Center, and Lincoln Center were all the mall Manhattan needs right now, thanks. But as the Observer reports, yesterday uber-leaseholder Larry Silverstein announced deals with three of the biggest brand names...
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Posted by greg allen at 07:50 AM | Comments (0)

September 23, 2003

WTC Plan Revisions revisited

Felix Salmon posted an admirable, in-depth, and probably a bit too optimistic review of the revised WTC site master plan. LMDC's offering Libeskind's whole 35Mb Powerpoint deck for download, so knock yourself out. Then today, Felix tried to envision what the rebuilt site would look like from the ground rather than from the god-like aerial views we're accustomed to seeing (Libeskind's as susceptible to the god complex as any architect). Again, Felix seems a little optimistic. He rightly points out...
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Posted by greg allen at 09:28 PM | Comments (0)

September 11, 2003

Ellsworth Kelly on Ground Zero

Ground Zero, Ellsworth Kelly, 2003, collage. image:nytimes.com The reconstructed text of a letter from Ellsworth Kelly to the Times' architecture critic, Herbert Muschamp: "On October 19, 2001, I wrote a letter to you (that I never sent) in response to an article in The New York Times which discussed the controversy of what was to be planned for the `Ground Zero' space, asking artists and others for their opinions. (Two artists, Joel Shapiro and John Baldessari urged that no...
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Posted by greg allen at 07:03 AM | Comments (0)

September 10, 2003

New Yorker on the WTC memorial and rebuilding

I'm a Paul Goldberger fan, and mad praise for his dogged reporting, following Daniel Libeskind around the country, but I'm not getting anything new from the profile in this week's New Yorker. When I schmoozed him last spring, Goldberger talked with great relish about digging in and laying out the powerful forces shaping the WTC rebuilding process. But this article comes too late to illuminate Libeskind's POV on the Silverstein-Childs hubbub, and too early to capture his reaction to the...
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Posted by greg allen at 04:10 PM | Comments (0)

August 24, 2003

WTC Memorial Space to Hold Unidentified Remains

Not new information, just more of it. From the NYTimes, the unidentified remains of those killed at the World Trade Center will be preserved in the hope that future technology will make identification possible. The remains will be interred at the memorial:"Right now I can look up at the sky and talk to him, but I can't go anywhere and reflect on his life,' said Lorie Van Auken, 48, whose husband, Kenneth, was on the 105th floor of the north...
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Posted by greg allen at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)

August 21, 2003

WTC Station's Master in Slate

BCE Galleria/Heritage Square, Toronto 1992, Santiago Calatrava, image: Galinsky.com On Slate, Christopher Hawthorne writes about Santiago Calatrava, architect of the transportation hub, um, slated for the WTC site. Hawthorne's got good architectural sensibility, but I think he's wrong to worry about Calatrava ignoring the context of his projects. True, many of Calatrava's flashiest designs look like they're sitting on a giant dining table, like an overwrought centerpiece, but that's what he's been asked to do. While I haven't been...
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Posted by greg allen at 11:49 PM | Comments (0)

August 19, 2003

WTC Memorial Competition Update

Newsday reports the WTC Memorial jury will select up to eight finalists, who will receive over $100,000 each to refine their designs more fully ("to develop models and three-dimensional computerized designs"). A winner (from among the finalists) will be announced in October or November. Jurors apparently walk around placing dots on the designs they like. Designs without dots are then pulled from subsequent rounds. [No mention of how many dots a juror gets, or if later rounds require multiple dots....
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Posted by greg allen at 08:21 PM | Comments (0)

August 16, 2003

On the Under-heralded Designer of The WTC Memorial Site

Part Two of a Washington Post series on the rebuilding of the WTC features George Tamaro, one of the original engineers of the slurry wall which is the centerpiece of Libeskind's memorial site design. The more I think about it, the more similarities I find between this aspect of the Libeskind proposal and Lochnagar Crater, the powerful, preserved, accidental memorial to WWI's Battle of the Somme. [This crater was central to my first short film, Souvenir November 2001, where a...
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Posted by greg allen at 07:46 PM | Comments (0)

July 31, 2003

Santiago Calatrava to design WTC Station?? That Rocks.

In the NYT, Ed Wyatt reports that the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava has been selected to design the train station at the World Train Center site. Now we're gettin' somewhere. [Finally, Herbert Muschamp weighs in, too, and favorably.] I've been a huge fan of Calatrava's sensual combination of organic form and hardcore engineering since seeing his competition-winning proposal for the Cathedral of St John The Divine in 1991, something of a departure from the train stations and bridges which...
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Posted by greg allen at 11:54 PM | Comments (0)

July 23, 2003

Familiar Stranger and Digital Patina

Anne Galloway's on a roll these days. Until this Fall, I can't say exactly why I find her posts about Intel Research Lab Berkeley's Eric Paulos' work so highly relevant just now. I can say that it's very heartening to find an affinity with someone so smart and forward-thinking. What the hell am I talking about? First is the social phenomena of the Familar Stranger, the people that you (don't) meet/ when you're walking down the street/ the people...
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Posted by greg allen at 03:34 PM | Comments (0)

July 17, 2003

5200 Entries for the WTC Memorial

The LMDC announced today that 5,200 qualified entries were accepted into the Memorial Competition. That's a much smaller yield than I estimated earlier. Even so, it's the largest design competition ever (my previous quality/quantity estimate still stands). Reuters reports that the evaluation schedule will now be "open ended given the volume of submissions [the jury] would have to sift through." Finalists will still be announced in the Fall, but not necessarily by September....
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Posted by greg allen at 08:17 PM | Comments (0)

David Childs' West Side Story

He's the only architect listed on the Observer's Dec. 2000 list of Players in New York's real estate game. Engineering a backroom takeover of the WTC rebuilding project may just be one step in David Childs' larger plan: to 0wn the West Side of Manhattan. The site is in line--the Eighth Ave. subway, to be specific--with other major Childs' projects in NYC: 33rd St: The New Penn Station, which has been widely praised. (image: pixelbypixel.com) 41st St: NYTimes Headquarters, a...
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Posted by greg allen at 12:42 PM | Comments (0)

July 01, 2003

WTC Memorial Submission: All Action, No Talk. Until Now.

For a few days, anyway. I got my Memorial competition submission done, expensively printed at Kinko's, and delivered. (The official Competition Site forbade hand delivery and said couriers must be "listed in the phone book," a verification system clearly designed to thwart my plan if I missed the Fedex deadline: dress up as a bike messenger using gear from my Kozmo.com collection.) Until I saw Ed Wyatt's Times article about plans pouring in yesterday, I was pretty satisfied with my...
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Posted by greg allen at 11:35 AM | Comments (0)

June 26, 2003

Must. Finish. WTC. Submission

Must. Learn. To. Photoshop. Properly. Must. Learn. Illustrator. Must. Admit. Powerpoint. Is. Not. A. Real. Graphics. Program. Must. Say, puffy fabric paint and a scanner is easier than learning Form-Z. Must. Say, I have newfound appreciation for the way artists' studios accrete materials and tools. You can't just go out and buy some of that stuff. Must. Add, that the world of craft supply stores is actually a solar system of tinier worlds: the claymolding world, the tole painting world,...
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Posted by greg allen at 09:22 AM | Comments (0)

June 21, 2003

Archaeology at WTC Site

In the MIT speech I posted last week, Rafael Vinoly made a comment that there was "no archaeology left" at the WTC site. It had been stripped to bedrock. The Bathtub/slurry wall had to be rebuilt/refaced/replaced already. The Twin Towers' footprints themselves now only exist as coordinates in an XYZ grid. I went to the site yesterday morning to map out my idea for the Memorial Competion, and to take reference pictures, and I found there IS "archaeology" on the...
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Posted by greg allen at 09:33 AM | Comments (0)

June 16, 2003

Interesting things I've found while working on the WTC Memorial Competition

(not in chronological order) Christopher Benfy's argument on Slate for why much less is more for a WTC Memorial. Benfy misuses an interesting term, "countermonument," which comes from Competition juror, Prof. James E. Young. [it's used on this syllabus] Speaking of syllabi, this outlines a Radcliffe Women's Studies graduate course titled The Politics of Traumatic Memory: History, Place, and Art in Societal Examinations of Memory. It's dated August 2001.Week 1, Sept. 12: Introduction: Interdisciplinary Course Themes 1. Politics, history and...
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Posted by greg allen at 08:05 PM | Comments (0)

June 12, 2003

Rafael Vinoly on the WTC Competition(s)

[via Archinect] Last month, MIT's Dept. of Architecture hosted a presentation by Rafael Vinoly, the Al Gore of last year's WTC competition study competition. Vinoly was part of Team THINK, and he tells about the antics at Herbert Muschamp's NYT Ground Zero (about 20 minutes into the stream), coming up with their plan for building a World Cultural Center (about 40 minutes in), and winning the campaign. Some highlights: (1:15:00) "Libeskind was courted; he was actually in Germany and decided...
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Posted by greg allen at 01:20 PM | Comments (0)

June 07, 2003

The Art House Project: James Turrell and Tadao Ando in Naoshima

Ando and Turrell collaborated on Minamidera, a Buddhist temple on Naoshima, a small island in Japan's Inland Sea. Is it worth noting that Ando was a boxer and Turrell was a Quaker? Here is one exchange from their conversation inside the completed space:Ando:The color is really nice. I have no difficulty just being here for 10 minutes. Turrell:Sometimes 10 minutes is difficult in modern life. This is fine that the situation of a work like this in a small...
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Posted by greg allen at 07:40 PM | Comments (0)

June 01, 2003

Catching up: WTC

Thursday night, seven of us got together to discuss our questions and challenges for the WTC Memorial competition. [Here's a sublog for the topic.] It was an extremely helpful and insightful couple of hours. The group included a journalist/weblogging guru, an architect, two artists, a designer, and me. Conversation was free-ranging; here's Jeff Jarvis's take(away), and here's some of mine: Take "performance pressure" off the Memorial, by limiting it to its Mission. Use the rest of the program at the...
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Posted by greg allen at 08:15 PM | Comments (0)

May 28, 2003

Whew. Observations from the WTC Memorial public forum

The LMDC held a forum for the public to tell WTC Memorial Competition jurors what kind of memorial they want, and how to make it relevant to future generations. [Check here for an archived webcast.] In the 1,000-seat auditorium, approximately 500 seats were filled, 300 by firefighters and their families, who clearly came to the meeting with an impassioned, cohesive message: rescue workers must not go unrecognized in the memorial. Let me come back to this. This, my first-ever public...
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Posted by greg allen at 10:29 PM | Comments (0)

May 14, 2003

WTC Memorial competition charette/discussion update

I've held off for a few days, waiting to finalize the list of participants, but in the mean time, I created a separate page where I'll post charette-related items. Tentative date: Wed., May 28, one day before the competition registration deadline. There is still space for another person (or maybe two), to join, so if you're going to submit a proposal to the WTC Memorial competition, you may want to join our discussion....
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Posted by greg allen at 02:48 PM | Comments (0)

Ground Zero muralist doesn't wait for the competition results

A Brooklyn artist, James Peterson, has created a mural in Tribeca that has some people upset. See it at Gothamist....
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Posted by greg allen at 12:34 PM | Comments (0)

May 07, 2003

WTC Memorial charette update; Maya Lin on the Vietnam competition

Been fielding some interesting responses from people on the WTC charette, including several about the word, "charette." A couple of people said it's snooty, a couple complained that it's architect-y, a couple complained it's French. As they say in darts, nice grouping. Please feel free to call it a roundtable, a workshop, a klatsch, hell, call it a "freedom cart" if your politics demands. Just call. Several folks, including me and the aforelinked Jeff Jarvis, have been concerned about how...
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Posted by greg allen at 07:39 PM | Comments (0)

May 06, 2003

Join a WTC Memorial Discussion/Charette

A couple of people saw some cynicism my last post on the WTC Memorial competition's designation as "open to all" and "part of the mourning process." It was partly a reaction to that member of the axis of eager, Jeff Jarvis. And there's my (not unfounded) skepticism about poorly guided democratic/populist design solutions. But mostly, it was about my own ambivalence about the process itself, what role a memorial there will play, and the use/impact/value of my own response. I...
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Posted by greg allen at 11:56 AM | Comments (0)

May 02, 2003

Libeskind's Uncomfortable Wedgie of Light

A controversy is brewing over Daniel Libeskind's design for the WTC site, which is moving, rapidly and significantly, from what he'd originally proposed--and won with. The NYTimes' Edward Wyatt is on top of things. Yesterday, he reported on a study which showed one of the Libeskind design's core elements, the Wedge of Light--a zone where unobstructed sunlight shone in between his buildings every Sept. 11th morning--was a physical impossibility. Busted, Libeskind tried to pretend that, all along, the Wedge wasn't...
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Posted by greg allen at 01:10 PM | Comments (0)

April 29, 2003

WTC Memorial: We're All Designers Now

That could be the sub-title of this site, really. I made Souvenir (November 2001), in part, to ask what could New York be like in 80 years, after the generation of us who experienced the attacks are all gone. How would the as-yet unborn people then and there remember us here and now? I should clarify: us=those who experienced (ie, died, survived, rescued, ran, watched, etc.). And already, in less than two years, here and now is becoming then and...
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Posted by greg allen at 10:59 AM | Comments (0)

February 22, 2003

First, Let Me Say, Daniel, We Loved Your Idea

And (according to the Guardian), we'd really like to move forward with it. We made just a couple of notes, 'Kay? The bathtub kept open as a memorial? We love it. What do you think about filling it in with a bus station? No, not all the way, just 2/3 or so. The 1,776-foot tower? With the sky gardens? One word: Inspiring. Not gonna build it, but it's inspiring. The memorial plaza that's sunny for one morning a year?...
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Posted by greg allen at 05:47 PM | Comments (0)

January 13, 2003

"The Eiffel Tower for the 21st Century"

This morning on Kurt Andersen's Studio360, Paul Goldberger suggested "the Eiffel tower of 21st century, something that would use the technology of our time with the brilliance that Eiffel used the technology of the 19th century," be built at the WTC site. It's a powerful articulation (7 words, including an 'of' and two 'thes') of a compelling idea. [Listen here.] Interestingly, Goldberger discussed a similar idea on Studio360 less than a month after the Towers fell. [Listen here.] Keep...
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Posted by greg allen at 09:41 AM | Comments (0)

January 09, 2003

Dream Team-gate: WTC Architects on Charlie Rose Make White House Flak Look Candid, Honest

That guy on the left isn't at all. He's Dan Bartlett, flak for the Architect of the Axis of Evil (and, frighteningly, the most straight-talking guy on the show) image: charlierose.com Just caught The WTC "Dream Team" (their quotes)--Charles Gwathmey, Peter Eisenman, Steven Holl, and Richard Meier --on Charlie Rose. [thanks for the headsup, archinect!] Preceded by an interview with White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett, Rose apparently chose obfuscation as tonight's theme. It was a lot of serious-minded...
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Posted by greg allen at 03:12 AM | Comments (0)

December 18, 2002

WTC Site Designs Revealed While Director Poaches Memorial-Friendly Media

If the 3+ hour multimedia press conference for around 25 brand name architects to present their proposals for the World Trade Center site were Saks, I was the chick selling hand-beaded mittens from a card table on the sidewalk. Actually, as a media event, it was more wholesale than retail; press and LMDC staffers outnumbered Invited Guests about 3:1. So rather than just spam the (presumably interested in memorials) crowd with cards for tomorrow's screening, I switched to providing...
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Posted by greg allen at 07:50 PM | Comments (0)

October 05, 2002

"Don't rebuild. Reimagine" (as applied to writing an animated musical feature)

My attention has been turned to the as-yet-unannounced feature I'm writing (unannounced because of the desire to confirm clear ownership of the story, because it's freakin' brilliant, and because there were some major plot questions in turning it into a kick-ass movie), an animated musical. On the train down to DC the other night, I had a breakthrough, facilitated by my decision to rewrite the script from scratch instead of waiting for the data-recovered version to arrive (or not)...
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Posted by greg allen at 05:41 PM | Comments (0)

September 07, 2002

Don't Rebuild. Reimagine.

Herbert Muschamp "curated" a re-imagining of downtown Manhattan, a process where some of the world's best-known architects (and a few up-and-comers) collaborated on and thrashed out an overall plan, then divvied up the resulting projects. From the cursory scan I've done, the result it energetic, a breath of fresh air, an unequivocal rebuke to any and all of the "thinking" that's gone into the official process so far, and, in some cases, inspiring. (To be fair, a couple of the...
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Posted by greg allen at 11:04 PM | Comments (0)

July 16, 2002

Today the LMDC released its

Today the LMDC released its six concepts for rebuilding the World Trade Center. Visit the LMDC concepts website for details. One thing that strikes me immediately is how they're all titled "Memorial _____" (fill in the blank with Square, Promenade, Plaza, Garden Triangle, or Park). You could say this forefronts the memorial as a priority of the rebuilding efforts, but it also seems like a way to avert criticism of the process and its preliminary results. By innoculating every concept...
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Posted by greg allen at 05:44 PM | Comments (0)

July 06, 2002

On Maya Lin's ninja-like approach to the WTC Memorial

There's an interesting article by Louis Menand in this week's New Yorker about Maya Lin called "The Reluctant Memorialist." He talks about her early rejection of any WTC Memorial-related requests and about her recent informal advisory work for the decisionmakers (as someone who's "been through the process.") In talking about Lin's reticence and justifiable anger at the Viet Nam memorial process (which sounds horrific, frankly, and doesn't give me too much hope for New York City's efforts), it's strange that...
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Posted by greg allen at 08:00 PM | Comments (0)

February 27, 2002

Today; it was announced that

Today; it was announced that the Towers of Light will go on display March 11, six months after September 11. Feb 26 was the nine-year anniversary of the first bombing of the World Trade Center....
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Posted by greg allen at 04:54 PM | Comments (0)

February 13, 2002

Found this on Slate: An

Found this on Slate: An interesting proposal for a World Trade Center memorial by Fred Bernstein, an architecture writer (for the NYTimes, among others, it seems). Basically, it's twin tower-sized piers with the names of those killed placed on the appropriate "floor." The piers would be oriented toward Ellis and Liberty islands. While I'm dubious of the mirror-like conceptual similarity to Maya Lin's Viet Nam memorial, which we visited last weekend (i.e., the orientation, the name placement mechanism), the simplicity...
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Posted by greg allen at 05:52 PM | Comments (0)