the making of, by greg allen
[via Archinect] WTC Memorial designer Michael Arad discusses his original idea, design process, and experience in a too-brief interview for Architectrual Record Magazine.
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 rebuilding process.
Meanwhile, somehow, the Observer also learned of complaints by Arad’s original proposal team members, who say he hogged all the credit on their group design. Someone’s trying to make a point that Arad doesn’t play well with others.
[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 opportunity for a more articulate account of the WTC Jury’s experience.
Young will speak Tuesday, March 2, 5:30 PM, at Dartmouth’s Loew Auditorium.
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 (whose show just closed at Mary Boone, and the last Englishman to hear of Olafur Eliasson).
Here are proposals by Valerie Atkisson, Kara Hammond, and Jeff Jarvis, original members of our competition charette last June. I’ll be surfing for a while, it seems.
[update: In Friday’s NYT, David Dunlap talks to jurors about revealing all the submissions.]
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.”
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 was essentially the jury that designed–and continues to design–the Memorial, and that Arad’s design was picked because it was the most amenable to their impending directives.
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 slurry wall. From within the space, visitors can look down 40′ to the foundations of the towers. That puts the newly treed park at street-level. Most of Libeskind’s original cultural buildings have either been eliminated or relocated. And it’s not finished yet; jurors describe this design as but “one more stage of memory.”
It’s worth waiting to examine the design in detail, but it feels like it’s trying to accommodate almost every criticism that arose during the guideline and selection process. Which may be why the jury picked Arad’s design in the first place: only the most pared down concept could support all the additions they foresaw. Nice idea, but can it work?
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 excitement–over what’s called a Section 106 Review, a federally mandated evaluation of the WTC site’s historical significance. Part of the National Historic Preservation Act, the review must be completed before federal money can be spent on the site. Muschamp sees this as a saving act: “Architectural preservationists are coming to the rescue one more time,” he says. [Q: Are you counting the Main St USA-style streetlamps on the West Side Highway as the first time, Herb?”]
Here are some Section 106 facts, from the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, which administers the law:
1. There was already at least one WTC-related Section 106 review, which dealt with a damaged landmark 1905 office building by Cass Gilbert. The ACHP case study praises the way in which the Sec. 106 process was adapted and “streamlined” so as to not get in the way of other activities on the site.
2. When Section 106 was invoked to preserve the 18th c. Negro burial ground discovered during the construction of the Foley federal courthouse in lower Manhattan, GSA listened politely, then ignored ACHP as it built. It then declared itself in compliance with Sec. 106.
3. I’m sure it means nothing, but the two presidential appointees of the ACHP are from Houston–and Albany.
If the Times were the 1/9 train, Muschamp would be the guy who gets on at 103rd, whose jabberings scare the passengers boarding downstream into other cars.
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 Absence” is also favored by some jurors, it seems. If Muschamp’s suddenly getting involved in what has been essentially Dunlap’s story, it must be because he’s been talking to one or more of the jurors. For the first time, we hear about “politicking and debates among jurors, who are conscious that prominent figures like former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani have called for a timeout but are also resolved not to be influenced by political pressures.”
While they’re right on principle–technically, what everyone is doing is second-guessing the jury–they shouldn’t feel obliged to stand on principle when they’ve so obviously made a weak decision.
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”?]
Continue reading “From The WTC Memorial Finalists: The Media Event”
