New design for Ground Zero announced. These just keep getting worse and worse. Now, in the name of security, the base will be set back and completely wrapped in reflective metal. No windows for 6 or 7 stories. Access only from the north and south, and the set back means it will completely shadow the Gehry performing arts center. Not to mention that it's completely unnecessary as functional office space. What there is a demand for is living space. Businesses haven't moved back downtown but people have. More and more people are living downtown. Let's turn the part of the site that's being developed into housing.
It's actually no windows for 20 stories at the base. Here's the review from the NYT architecture critic, which is ... not good. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/30/a...&en=7980015bd7d6cba0&ei=5094&partner=homepage
I strongly agree... what is needed is an exact recreation of the original World Trade Center, so that the world knows that despite the act of terror, the United States goes on unafraid! This new building design looks feminine and pacifist! I favor a stronger statement! Perhaps The Donald could be used to recreated Ground Zero in NYC for a real Trump-type building!
Are you going to put up the money for it? Because it would be a financial disaster. There isn't demand for that much office space in lower Manhattan. Heck, the old WTC wasn't even completely occupied. If an "American" solution to that space exists, it will be a pragmatic use of the space to meet the demands of the market place combined with a memorial of some sort. Not some chest-thumping white elephant. Is an empty office building really the best way you can think to honor those that died?
Great points. Let's use the space for what's most in demand: mixed income housing in Manhattan. Instead of building an empty bunker, let's turn a space of death into living space.
The cost for office space in Manhatten not really a concern here is it? I'm sure lots of firms would lease a space once the building is completed... Hell, Donald Trump is building one like it just uptown! However, if you object to such a recreation of the WTC on this spot, how about we establish a secured building for the long-term imprisonment of Muslim fanatics... that would be particularly appropriate don't ya think? We could also build a smaller building for their eventual execution!
They don't seem to have trouble getting people to rent in Battery Park City and the prices there are crazy. There's a lot more demand for housing downtown than office space. http://www.therealdeal.net/issues/June_2005/1117819616.php
what is the conventional/unconventional wisdom of real estate in NYC? From where I see it - large new residential buildings go into neighborhoods that are on the rise or peaked socially. Chelsea/Meatpacking district. Lower East Side. Washington Heights(?). Brooklyn. When hipsters hang in an area with good bars and nightlife, big condos follow. It doesn't work the other way does it? (tribeca does not equal hipsters, just rich folk) Not to knock Nathan Hales or the **********cat Lounge or my favorite bartenders who left the Village Idiot for the Patriot Saloon - but what would draw people to lower manhattan besides work?
I'm telling you...leave it a wide open, grass/memorial space during the day, and have a dual NYPD/NYFD honor guard ceremoniously "light" these every night...and never forget. OTOH, you could have, as the NYT architecture critic submits (and as someone else posted), a "...omber, oppressive and clumsily conceived" design, "...a monument to a society that has turned its back on any notion of cultural openness." The critic is right when he sumbits, "The temptation is to dismiss it as a joke." Twin Towers of light, ritual and ceremony, no development, but authentic pauses for remembrance and memorial...in fact, I'd like to see a synergy of memorials between all three 9/11 sites. That's the way forward IMO.
Because the office space isn't needed, it's foolish to build such a large building. However, as bland as the new design is, it's nowhere near as ugly as the original twin towers. Trump's idea is crass and thoughtless: the destruction of the original towers was tragic because of the huge loss of life and the shock of a terrorist attack happening on American soil, not because a piece of great architecture was lost. The originals were ass ugly.
Exactly what Mel said. The attempts to recreate the towers or build another skyscraper are extremely creepy, not to mention impractical, and in no way commemorative.
Screw memorials. The focus on death is disgusting. Well, this tower is design by comprimise, so of course it sucks. I've seen the model of David Childs' original design for a freedom tower and it is miles ahead of this thing. But true it is much better than the old towers. PS, Why can't you have housing and business in the same tower? I'm sure this thing can get any variance it wants.
I don't want this to sound insensitive, but why does commemoration remain the only acceptable use for the space? I agree that a memorial is important, and I quite like the designs I've seen for the memorial. And I obviously agree that the current design sucks and is exactly the wrong, bunkered reaction. And the rebuilding the towers thing is all the things you say above. But to keep the entire site a memorial or to bring up the lights every night (and they are one of the most powerful public memorials I've experienced) seems equally creepy. It seems to fix the space forever in time on September 11. No one who was alive 9/11/01 is ever going to forget what happened there or the people who died, but the city continues to live. One of the inspiring thing about NYC post 9/11 is how the space around the WTC has come back, how many people have moved back down there, etc. I think we need to think about ways for spaces of life to exist in the same space that tragedy is remembered. It seems to me that bringing up the towers of light every night would at some point cross from rememberance to routine. No reason that they shouldn't be brought up on the anniversaries, like they are now, but everynight seems overly maudlin.