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Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets
  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.


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Wednesday, February 5, 2003
03:26 - Coffin nails in the skyline

(top) link
I was going to say something about what the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation has decided are the two best possible ideas for replacing the WTC-- but I knew it would be pointless to try to come up with anything that would qualify as insight, compared to the inevitable (and oh-so-welcome) analysis by Lileks.

He doesn't like either one, and I'm glad I'm not the only one. (I noticed, on the day the finalists were posted, that the CNN preference poll was evenly split 32.1%-32.1% between the two choices, and yes, it was really that close-- and another third of the participants had voted for "any design but these two". Not a ringing endorsement among the populace. While I may be cavalier about politicians' obligation to listen to opinion polls that canvass respondents who don't have anywhere near as much classified intelligence on a given matter as the politicians do, I do think the LMDC has some obligation to do what the people want to see in the WTC's place. And the people are looking at these designs and wrinkling their noses.

The two designs the LMDC has chosen were at the bottom of my preference list; both seemed very, very wrong. I'm yet more sure of that now that I've looked more closely at both, now that we're going to have to live with one of them. And that's what I think is going to be one of the sticking points here, something that ought to give New Yorkers and all Americans pause: With the WTC simply gone, there's the warm glow of hope-- hope that whatever goes in there in its place will be something to dwarf even the previous towers in grandeur and awe-inspiration. There's the element of pleasant surprise; how many of us looked at the empty skyline and said, "Well, there's nothing there now, and it looks empty, but just wait'll they build something new!" There's the assumption that whatever goes there will be something we can be proud of, something that will comfort us for the loss of the first WTC through its tastefulness and originality and its odd familiarity. We feel as though whatever we get, it'll be better than the WTC was. We're in the 21st Century now, aren't we? Surely we know how to build beautiful buildings now, after so many centuries of practice? There's no way we can go wrong, is there?

Sure there is, unfortunately. We can always try to outsmart ourselves-- if you will, to THINK the design to death.

I remain sort of reluctantly partial to the WTC2002 design-- audacious as it is, it's still a building as we understand the concept, and it works with the existing Manhattan skyline to form a sturdy anchor-- a masthead for the country, one that we can tie our nation's rigging ropes to, and one that won't snap off in the wind out of being really no more than a latticework memorial. It's a real building, with real people and real culture inside. The old WTC stood at one end of the country like a billboard, saying, "Go west beyond this point, and more of this is what you'll see. People working, building their national dream. They're all on display here, doing what they do best, thirty thousand of them in two gigantic vertical boxes. Be inspired, and go find your own box somewhere out there in that great expanse westward. Go through the gateway and seek the fortune that we wish you." The old WTC was the beginning of America, traveling westward. But these new designs do the opposite; they're the end of America, traveling eastward. They're the prows of foundering ships. They're ghosts and relics and memories. They're not vibrant celebrations of the future, they're morose fixations on the past. One evokes that past through a macabre and disturbing phantom; the other leaps so far away from the old visual mores as to reject even a contemplation of what made that place special. And neither design projects an image of strength; even if they're both potentially the world's tallest structures, neither one beckons the viewer with an impossibly thriving iteration of the familiar, as the old towers did. Instead, they make the viewer frown and wonder. They don't reassure, they disturb.

Worst of all, if one of these designs gets built, that will be it. What if it sucks? What if New York decides the building is really, really awful? They can't very well get rid of it and start over. They'll be stuck with it. Right now, there's the open-ended hope that whatever gets built will rock. But if the LMDC picks one of these, that hope will be dashed. We'll be condemned to whatever ghostly or alien vision the LMDC decides to visit upon the site, for the foreseeable future. And it'll change the character of Manhattan, and New York, and America, more than the simple lack of the old WTC already has done.

Part of me still says "Build them back exactly like before." I know it's probably not feasible. But Lileks finishes with this lament:
One of the greatest architects of the era was Raymond Hood, who also worked on two modern icons - the Daily News building, which was a glass of cold water in the face, and the gorgeous McGraw Hill building, which isn't much known outside of New York. (It's up there with the Chrysler, in my book.) But he was adept at classical styles; his American Radiator building still overlooks Bryant Park, and it's another one of my favorites. Black stone, gold crown. He was not an innovator, but he captured the essence of a style and distilled it into the best possible expression.

If only we could bring him back to life and give him this job. I think I know what he'd do - it would be restrained, severe, symmetrical, and it would strike the sky like two great swords.
Hear frickin' hear.


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© Brian Tiemann