A correction: Reading Herbert Muschamp’s review of MoMA’s “Tall Buildings” show, which includes the United Architects proposal for the WTC site. [The ‘Dream Team’ proposal is in there, too, but I’ve said all I’ll say about that.]
Coming after the pissed-to-be-publicly-accountable Meier, United Architecture’s proposal was surprisingly moving that morning in Dec.2002. They had made a video (it’s still on their site) with cuts of all kinds of happy shiny people looking up from the street, pointing at the new buildings, “like,” I said, “they used to do.” But it’s not really true.
Unless you were a tourist wanting to get fleeced, or you needed to get your bearings, you didn’t come out of the subway and look up at the World Trade Center, and you sure didn’t point.
Except on that morning. It just occurred to me that Farenheit 9/11 opened with shots of people staring, looking up, pointing. Like an uninsidious version of the Dream Team, United Architects unconsciously incorporated the attacks themselves into its presentation.
Conceived after September 11th, in case the world needed a reminder, “Tall Buildings” makes the complicated psychic and emotional power of skyscrapers as its jumping off point. Which is about as complicated a phrase as I can come up with.
[2018 UPDATE: In 2018 The New York Times reports that five women who worked with Meier, either at his firm or as a contractor, have come forward to say the architect made aggressive and unwanted sexual advances and propositions to them. The report also makes painfully clear that Meier’s behavior was widely known for a long time, and that his colleagues and partners did basically nothing to stop it beyond occasionally warning young employees to not find themselves alone with him. This update has been added to every post on greg.org pertaining to Meier or his work.]
