Category: world trade center memorial

Hmm. I don’t really know what to make of this. In the months after September 11, when no one knew what shape the WTC site would take in the future, but when people were at least entertaining the possibility that architecture and contemporary art might be able to make some sense of what’d happened, John Powers’ ideas from a show about memorials earlier that year kept coming to my mind.
He proposed aggressively political minimalist gestures for sites in Manhattan (Penn Station, the now-defunct East River Guggenheim) and DC (the WWII Memorial) that upset prevailing notions of public space, spectacle, sentimentality, order and control, and history, among other things. [Although more successful and uncompromised by virtue of its sheer impossibility, Powers’ proposal for a WWII memorial eerily prefigures Michael Arad’s original fountain pit design, transposed to the end of the Reflecting Pool on the Mall.]
Powers never pursued any direct responses or proposals to the WTC site, either for Max Protech’s early display of (as it turned out) architectural impotence and hubris, or for the WTC Memorial ‘competition.’ Still, I thought of Powers when I saw Ellsworth Kelly’s collaged proposal for the WTC site–a NYT aerial photo with a trademark Kelly trapezoid superimposed on it.
Meanwhile, I followed along (or obsessed over, take your pick) the WTC rebuilding issues and saw the craven folly and political machinations unfold before my eyes–and anyone elses? I often wondered. Then I found Philip Nobel’s book Sixteen Acres, the first unsentimental look at what was actually transpiring behind the scenes and in front of our still-teared up eyes. It’s harsh in places, mostly as it should be, and I only wish it could’ve brought some things to light sooner. It’s the same kind of weary wishfulness that allows you to entertain fleeting thoughts of disaster averted, “what if we’d–” and “if only we’d–” before snapping back to the grim reality of our political failures.
Anyway, I only bring this up now because a friend showed me Powers’ early 2001 invite with details of his projects and then pulled out their own copy of Sixteen Acres. [They’re scanned side by side above.]
I am a solid fan of both peoples’ work, but there was clearly something going on in the design process for Nobel’s 2005 cover which needs some explaining. The frontispiece says “Design by Fritz Metsch, Map by David Cain,” with cover design by Raquel Jaramillo. But to me, it’s clearly John Powers’ work.
Buy Nobel’s excellent Sixteen Acres : Architecture and the Outrageous Struggle for the Future of Ground Zero at Amazon
Previously: Ellsworth Kelly on Ground Zero
UPDATE: I emailed Philip Nobel about this. Here is his reply:

Thanks for the heads up. I’ve been on both sides of this sort of
accusation before (this time, I guess, I’m a bystander). But I can
assure you there was no foul play. Re “explaining to do”: Before the
book was written, the Holt art department had cooked up something that
looked like a Bob Woodward book (still posted around online in spots).
My editor and I didn’t think it made sense with the feel of the
finished thing, so we cooked up the idea of a map (sitting in her
office on 18th Street; no graphic cues on hand). I said “black” and
that it had to go as far north as possible (in the spirit of that
Borges quote and the first lines of the prologue), and she said we
should just box out the shape of the site like a symbol. Raquel worked
from those directions. She’s good people, and i don’t think so mobbed
up in the art or architecture worlds that she would have seen your
friend’s work, which, of course, looks really interesting. I imagine
“map” led her to an aerial view, “black” led her to the one in
question, and “box out/symbol” led her to treat the site as she did.
You know from reading the book that I’m all about seeing the worst in
our fellow men. But this sort of convergence reminds me of the recent
forced frenzy (Lock was tracking it) over Freedom Tower cognates. Might
it not just be a case of two people with good taste seeing the graphic
possibilities of applying a color field (red, an obvious choice) to
what appears to be the same publicly available (via the Library of
Congress) image?

Also, timely but not quite directly related: With Covers, Publishers Take More Than Page From Rivals [nyt]

” [G]round zero is not really being shaped by architects; it is being shaped by politicians.”
“[Freedom Tower] will be seen by the world as a chilling expression of how we are reshaping our identity in a post-Sept. 11 context.”
[ouroussof, nyt]
Redesign Puts Freedom Tower on a Fortified Base [nyt]

George Pataki demanded “an absolute guarantee” that no one be offended by what goes on with the cultural organizations at the WTC site. That’s frankly offensive.
I love that the problem here is couched in terms of politicians’ “difficulty of policing artwork,” not in terms of, say, “a blatantly anti-American demagoguery that mocks the very idea of ‘freedom.'”

Pataki Warns Cultural Groups for Museum at Ground Zero [nyt]

Upset that the Wall Street Journal is having all the fun, what with all the Bush Republican-campaigning sisters of dead Sept. 11th pilots demagoguing about whose “truth” is in and whose “propaganda” is out at the WTC site, the New York Daily News tried to gin up a controversy of its own about, of all things, The Drawing Center.
At least the critics of the International Freedom Center’s are sophisticated (sophistry-cated?) enough to demand that no politically distorted manipulations of “history” or “freedom” be allowed to cloud the memories of the people who were killed on Sept. 11th. [Except, of course, the revealed truth of the Gospel according to the Bush Administration, but who’d ever doubt that? Terrorists and their friends, that’s who.]
Left to pick up the crumbs of the new Political Correctness table, the Daily News got suddenly outraged at “anti-American” art–four pieces that have been critical of George Bush or the US–shown at The Drawing Center since 2001, and “demanded” that something be done about it. Doing his best combover and his steeliest resolve, George Pataki declared that he’ll never let any anti-American art be shown at the WTC site.
Governor, I know Rudy Giuliani. Rudy Giuliani was a pandering, fascistic, constitutionally guaranteed freedom of artistic speech-trampling mayor of mine. And you sir, are no Rudy Giuliani. Not for lack of trying, though.
Nutty 9/11 Art Nixed [nydn]
Meanwhile, the NYDN, for one, welcomes our new government overlords [nydn]
Get the Picture, Governor? [nydn]
Previously (06/2004): WTC Site Cultural Anchor: The Drawing Center?? Ironically, the Daily News cites the vast, painstakingly investigated and researched [!] schematics of the late artist Marc Lombardi. The work they complain about maps out ties between the George W. Bush’s Harken Energy, the Saudi royal family, and the Bin Laden family. The title says, “fifth version, 1979-1990.” It was made in 1999. Lombardi took his own life in 2000.

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]

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]

What is missing at ground zero is a sense of humility. This is something that cannot be remedied by reducing the scale of a building. We should refocus attention on what matters most: remembering the human beings who were lost at ground zero, while allowing life to return to the void there. The rest is a pointless distraction.

–Nicolai Ouroussoff, discussing the inherent problems with the current redevelopment and memorial plans for the WTC site, which he notes has been parcelled out to different political constituencies and filled with clutter.

Miss Representation dumps a scalding hot cup of realism in the Port Authority’s lap by asking if their crown jewel–and the only thing the PA’s obduracy hasn’t botched so far–the Calatrava “transit hub”, isn’t just a crown roast instead.
The official line, of course, is that everything’s going smoothly, no hitches, what? but as MR points out, that’s demonstrably not possible, given the degree of flux and uncertainty surrounding all the other elements of the site redevelopment.
And then, on its face, he says, the design seems guaranteed to fail as anything other than a pompous, largely superfluous “glass hat.” And we know Calatrava’s not above building one of those, given budget enough and a seducibly ignoramic client.
I don’t see how ‘roof of bones’ won’t be the inevitable epithet. [miss representation]
previously: How is this Calatrava Moment different from all other Calatrava Moments?

According to Alex Frangos’ report in the Wall Street Journal, roughly $1.8 billion of the $4.6 billion insurance proceeds for the WTC have been spent so far on things like buyouts (is that Westfield, the Autralian mall company that used to have the retail rights?) and $15 million/year in management fees for Larry Silverstein. [Not mentioned: the eight figure monthly lease payments Silverstein pays to the Port Authority to stay in the game.]
What IS mentioned, though, is Silverstein’s heartfelt but hmm, never-mentioned-until-now love of Tribeca:

To woo tenants, Silverstein Properties is trying to distance the building from the image of the Trade Center, though it literally sits on the site’s edge. Instead of 7 World Trade Center, the building will be marketed under a newly created street address, 250 Greenwich St. The idea, according to someone familiar with the matter is to emphasize the building’s proximity to TriBeCa, the trendy neighborhood to the north. It’s also a tacit admission, according to real-estate executives, that the World Trade Center name scares prospective tenants.

Showdown at Ground Zero [wsj, sub. req.]

While Kevin Rampe jumps from the LMDC, Larry Silverstein may be getting the push. NY1 hears creaking and shouts of eminent domain from Pataki’s office, as if he wasn’t the visionless machinator behind the whole fiasco. Now opportunists like Sheldon Silver and Chuck Schumer, and the previously stiff-armed Mike Bloomberg smell political smoke wafting from the pile that is the WTC site redevelopment process.
Once everything’s cleared away, Liebeskind’s Bathtub Wall may be the only thing left, by default. Except that, as Miss Representation points out, confusion and indecision and compartmentalized “fixes” only further the interests of the Port Authority, whose unaccountable activities–if not their plan–are already in slow, bureaucratic motion.
The leadership and vision void MR sees at the center deserves scrutiny and attention, and some day it’ll get rigorous analysis, too. But in the mean time, I’ve got an all-too-familiar fear, a dread of another collapse that could have, should have, might have been avoided.
Now that the Times said it, it must be true [missrepresentation.com, via curbed]
Officials Consider Eminent Domain At Ground Zero [ny1]

And that stands for Port Authority or Pataki, take your pick.
The Port Authority has apparently threatened some of the architects involved with various aspects of the WTC site redevelopment with breach of their confidentiality agreements if they talk to one other about possible solutions to the growing number of architectural casualties in the master plan. So what’s a muzzled starchitect to do? Why, talk to the NY Times architecture critic, of course.
Who then writes a damning criticism on the crumbling folly of the Port Authority’s handling of the master plan, the redevelopment, and the memorial. The problem? Imperiousness and “the mix of secrecy, self-interest and paranoia that have enveloped the site from the outset – a climate that favors political expediency and empty symbolic gestures over thoughtful urban planning discussions.”
Sounds like New York real estate and politics to me.
At Ground Zero, Disarray Reigns, and an Opportunity Awaits [nyt]

No honest questioning of the Silverstein/Port Authority 10mm sf program. No more Libeskind master plan. No political backbone or redevelopment vision. No appreciation for the arts as anything but a criticism-placating bullet point on a mission statement. No program apparently required for this amorphous-at-best Freedom Center museum thing, which is going ahead full force anyway. And now no fundraising for no performing arts center, which was originally pitched as a central requirement for the site’s viable rebirth.
Ada Louise Huxtable’s pissed, and–if she thought it’d help–she wouldn’t take it anymore.
Death of a Dream: There won’t be a creative rebirth at Ground Zero after all. [wsj, via curbed]

Since when did architecture Max Bond, of Davis Brody Bond get above-the-line billing on the design of the World Trade Center Memorial?
From the earliest beginnings of the WTC redevelopment and memorial design process, there’s been a dissonant gap between the public theater and the actual, invisible strategizing and decisionmaking. Like Japanese bunraku, where the puppeteers are in full view, but the audience is transfixed by the controlled movements of the marionettes.
Some day–but not yet, because it’s still going on–there’ll be an eye-opening saga on the scale of Robert Caro’s The Power Broker to come out of the WTC.
And Bond Makes Three at the WTC [curbed, and miss representation]

The Daily Show; Wag The Dog; Antonia Bird’s film, The Hamburg Cell; William Basinski’s albums, The Disintegration Loops I-IV; Iyer and Ladd’s In What Language?, and more, all mapped against the relevant chapters of The 9/11 Commission Report.
At Pitchfork, Chris Dahlen has assembled a thoughtful, sometimes laughable, sometimes cringe-inducing list of pop cultural works where September 11th has figured prominently.
The Pop Culture of 9/11 [pitchforkmedia.com, via fimoculous]
previously: the 2004 launch of Iyer and Ladd’s song cycle, In What Language?

Whoa. I had a looong post about the designs for the Flight 93 memorial competition for the site in Shanksville, PA, but I think I’ll spare you. For a few reasons:

Lowered expectations. Since the WTC site debacles (or, if you’re a Port Authority politico or a hack developer, roaring successes), any idealism or greater hopes that I held out for memorials have dissipated.

The designs themselves. Again, the WTC memorial competition shows that 1) 90+% of the entries are artifacts of their designers’ own remembering and reworking process, little mini-memorials-of-one; 2) Land Art, refracted through the emotional/experiential prism of Maya Lin, remains the de facto official language of memorials, and this is even more apparent in the rural setting of the Flight 93 memorial; 3) individualism-uber-alles, as the 40 passengers and crew are remembered with 40 identical somethings [although one design, which recreates the plane’s rows of seats, does divide them into coach and first class]; and 4) in a fit of information design-as-architecture, many designers simply reacted to the competition brief, accepting its arbitrary data as Important–the plane’s angle of impact, the map’s circular boundary around the debris/remains field–and translating them directly into the program.

Problematics of the Flight 93 story itself. In a Bizarro universe somewhere, the rapidly canonized “Let’s roll” narrative of American heroes sacrificing themselves and successfully thwarting the terrorists’ plans has already unraveled as a series of investigations and revelations showed that the plane was shot down on Dick Cheney’s chain-of-command-ignoring orders. Of course, that’d never happen in this universe… [Yet there IS one design that unintentionally (?) hints at this of-course-there’s-no-conspiracy. It’s title: “40 Grassy Knolls.”]

My own unacceptable idea is better. Sort of. I would build a runway for Flight 93. It would be an authentic and realistic landing strip, not metaphorical, as some competition entrants labeled their memorial paths. Mine would follow the rolling topography, though, so in addition to coming several years too late, it’d be unusable. Still, it’d evoke the thoughts that dance briefly across everyone’s minds, “Could this have been averted? What if we could turn back time?”
But then I realized that all three of my Sept. 11th memorial ideas–the one I submitted for the WTC site and the ersatz ideas I conjured for the Pentagon and Shanksville–arise from the same sentiment, a self-consciously futile nostalgia. And I don’t know quite what that means.
See the five finalists and all 1,059 entries at the Flight 93 Memorial Project site.