IF YOU DON'T BUILD IT THEY WILL COME:

SLINGS AND ARROWS: The architectural machinations at Ground Zero can be treacherous. (PAUL GOLDBERGER, 2004-02-09, The New Yorker)

Every time a new design element for Ground Zero is announced, the presentation room overflows with public officials. Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg give speeches hailing the planning process as democracy in action and congratulate each other for making it all possible, and the architects describe their projects in a humble, low-key manner. Protocol is as precise as that of a state dinner, and everyone is excruciatingly polite. But it was a hard act to bring off at the press conference in mid-December where the design for Freedom Tower, which is intended to be the world’s tallest skyscraper, was unveiled. David Childs, the architect who was in charge of the design, and Daniel Libeskind, who created the master plan for Ground Zero and was supposedly Childs’s partner on the tower, were barely speaking to each other. They had fought bitterly during their collaboration, which was forced on them by Pataki. Neither man was fully happy with the result, and, while Libeskind endorsed the design as consistent with the principles of his plan, he mentioned Childs’s name only once, in a pro-forma way.

Things were not quite what they seemed on January 14th, either, when the memorial designed by Michael Arad and Peter Walker was presented. After the political speeches, Arad, who is only thirty-four, spoke earnestly about his intentions, and Peter Walker, who is seventy-one and an eminent landscape architect, said a few words. Then Libeskind, as usual, talked about how well the memorial fit in with his master plan. In fact, of course, Michael Arad’s design (Walker got involved only after Arad was selected as one of eight finalists, in November) did away with what had been considered the most fundamental aspect of Libeskind’s original proposal, the sunken pit in which a memorial was to be placed. Libeskind had insisted that the entire foundation area of the twin towers be left open to a level of thirty feet below the sidewalk, and that a large portion of the surviving slurry wall of the old concrete structure be exposed. Arad ignored all this, although part of the slurry wall was exposed in the revised plan that he worked out with Walker.

Is Libeskind a masochist, or simply more of a politician than the politicians? Twice in the space of a month, he stood next to the governor, the mayor, and officials from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the Port Authority—his clients—as they made announcements that altered key portions of his master plan for Ground Zero. He could not get away with faking much good cheer at the unveiling of Freedom Tower, since the press had already reported that there was friction between him and Childs, but he radiated bonhomie at the memorial announcement. A little over a week later, at the unveiling of Santiago Calatrava’s model for a spectacular new path terminal, he was positively ebullient, although Calatrava had all but usurped the role that Libeskind had hoped for as the shaper of iconic architecture at the site. He had also appropriated Libeskind’s original Wedge of Light idea into the actual architecture of his building. (That could be considered a form of flattery, but it was probably more of a rescue operation, since Libeskind’s Wedge of Light Plaza never seemed quite workable.)

Libeskind was horrified when the jury selected Michael Arad and Peter Walker’s plan for the memorial. He told Kevin Rampe, the head of the L.M.D.C., that the jury had undermined two years of his work. He was not alone in thinking that a slight was intended. Some people believed that Arad had been selected as a finalist just so that the jury could assert its independence from the rest of the planning process. Arad not only raised most of Libeskind’s sunken memorial site but eliminated the angular museum building that Libeskind had proposed for the northern end of Ground Zero—the building that projected over a portion of the north tower’s footprint. Arad suggested instead a long, narrow slab of a building that would run along the western edge of the site, and that would have walled off the memorial from West Street and the World Financial Center, in Battery Park City. Nevertheless, his submission was the sharpest and the least sentimental of the eight designs that got into the final segment of the competition. He proposed marking the footprints of the Twin Towers with sunken reflecting pools, and he left most of the ground level open as a stark plaza. Compared with many of the other designs, which employed shimmering lights, water, and gardens, Arad was tough. He used austerity to suggest emptiness and loss, and he avoided kitsch.

They ought not to put a new building there. Let the very emptiness of one of the most valuable parcels of land on Earth be a testament to the greater value we place on recalling the fellow citizens who were murdered that day.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 2, 2004 10:15 AM