http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=1&aid=64371 I kinda wish that the Libeskind concept could have been represented a bit better rather than this boring stick in the ground. I understand why the project had to change but David Childs and SOM are good enough architects to do better than this. That said, if Libeskind's studio didn't have such contempt for all things practical like building codes and the such, maybe we would have something interesting at the bottom of Manhattan Island.
No accident that this happened, what, three months after Bloomberg got fed up with Pataki and the architects and took a bigger role. Are they still doing the 20 story (or whatever) concrete-block base? If so, that's going to seem really weird in a space with a lot of ped traffic.
To defend the architects, they were forced to complete 5 seperate design development an 3 seperate construction document sets based on the whims of the various interstate, state and local government buearocracies. However the biggest roadblock was between the developer and the city/state. As for the design, I haven't seen live documents in about a year (I did a good amount of work with SOM in 2005), but at that point it was a modified concrete base. It was a covered CMU with a glass curtain wall on the first couple of floors, then blank for a bit. Hopefully that garbage has changed.
From what I've heard (and it's 3rd and 4th hand so grains of salt), Pataki was the biggest problem, as he'd come in every 3-4 months and issue some edict that the architects would then have to follow. In the long NYT story on 9.11, he certainly didn't come out looking very good.
I'm not really familiar with the project... but if the concrete block base has the names of the victims inscribed, then the bottom would look like a monument. BTW... I really hate the name of the building... Freedom Tower. Was there a vote or something, or did the government of the US or NYC just decide to name it that?
IIRC, it was the name of the tower in the Leibskind master plan. That plan won a public charette in competition with 4 other designs so in a way it was voted on. The memorial is a whole different animal on the same master plan encompassing both original footprints and the space in between. As of now it's a sunken water/granite thing with all of the manes on it. The concrete shell was purely for security measures and insisted on by the FDNY