Envisioning Downtown

loved the presentation, loved some of the proposals.

my fave was without a doubt Libeskind's. I was conceptually attracted to the THINK project as well, but it's too clealry related to both the Centre Pompidou and a well-known, never constructed work known as the Monument to the 3rd International.

THe video tour of the THINK project includes an amphitheatre; Tatlin's monument was crowned with an assembly hall destined to be the meeting place of the Congress of Soviets; it won;t take long for more influentail architectyral critics to point out that the THINK project is then not only a memorial to the WTC but to communism, and therefore unbuildable.

I HATED the other designs, with the exception of the one which incorporated the 'shadows" of the towers; even that fails, though, since the only way to experence the design as such is from the air, inappropriately enough.

The huge winds that the Richard Meier design must ineviatbly generate render it an affont to pedestrians and inhabitants of lower Manhattan, and the rest of the designs were either mushy (kissing towers) or looked like the kind of buildings in which Darth Vader would locate the Imperium's HQ (the United Architects project).

I'm not close enough to the debate to offer deeper punditry, though. I'm reasonably sure my critique of the THINK project will occur independenty - it should be noted that my noting that the antecedents of the design render it unbuildable for political reasons do not mean I think those reasons are good; I don't.

But someone will see how easy it will be to advance their career by piously defending the memory of the victims of September 11 and of Stalin's purges at the same time. This person will be a dangerous, ugly, untruatworthy demagogue.

I looked at the proposals and I couldn't help but thinking that they are really gawdy. I personally liked the Peterson/Littenberg proposal the best because it fits in with the New York motif and it is low-key, placing the emphasis on the memorial. The other designs seem to stick out way more than the original towers did. I don't know if I like that idea very much. Yeah the architects want to make a statement about how great New York is and how America won't bow down to terrorism, but why not make the World Trade Center towers into something useful?

The THINK design really cracked me up because it really has no purpose. A lattice tower is a waste of space and it isn't all that beautiful. At least the Libeskind design looks good, but to me it only looks good when it isn't smack inside the financial district. There it just looks out of place.

None of the designs strike me that much but I think the planners shouldn't go with something that is way over the top, like the Meier proposal because after the initial shock value wears off, I think people will start to detest it.

I don't understand the Richard Meier one. It's a massive picket fence towering above the skyline, or a modified hash mark. It's probably my least favorite because it's the least inspiring.

I too really hope they don't go with the Meier design. It's just plain awful.

The Peterson/Littenberg proposal seems a really weak, safe choice that will hardly anchor the bottom of the island. That's what's really missing for me when I look down Broadway from within Manhattan, or see the city from NJ or Brooklyn: the absence is still palpable and slightly disorienting somehow. The Towers of Light were fantastic while they were there, though obviously we need a permanent solution.

I'm pulling for either the Libeskind or United Architects' proposal. Either one would give the space its due.