BUILD NOTHING:

Debating Ground Zero Architecture and the Value of the Void (SARAH BOXER, September 30, 2002, NY Times)

The topic was grand: "Monument and Memory." But the debate on Friday night turned out to be simple: Should there be something rather than nothing? Or nothing rather than something?

On the side of something was Daniel Libeskind, the architect who designed the Jewish Museum in Berlin. On the side of nothing were Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, and Sherwin B. Nuland, the author of "How We Die" (Knopf, 1994). It was the first Columbia University Seminar on Art and Society, held at the New-York Historical Society. And the men were fighting over architecture at ground zero. [...]

"There is something a little grotesque in the interpretation of ground zero as a lucky break for art," Mr. Wieseltier said. "Lower Manhattan must not be transformed into a vast mausoleum, obviously, but neither must it be transformed into a theme park for advanced architectural taste."

"The spiritual challenge of ground zero is plainly much greater than the architectural challenge," he said. And what can rise to this challenge? Mr. Wieseltier suggested a void and a flag. The flag should be there to say that "we were attacked because we are Americans." The void should be there to give a sense of finality and facticity, he said, to accommodate both "godfulness and godlessness, certainty and doubt, anger and hope."

In the Jewish tradition, Mr. Wieseltier said, one mourns and remembers not with buildings and things, but with words and rituals. "Those are its most powerful weapons against oblivion." Among the many things crushed on Sept. 11, Mr. Wieseltier said, was the worship of architecture.

We're pro-void. It seems inevitable that any monumental architecture they do there will be just grotesque and a businessplace would defile the site. Leave it a void to symbolize our loss and remind us what can happen when we fail to take our enemies seriously. Posted by Orrin Judd at September 30, 2002 8:04 AM