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Katherine Mangu-Ward takes the scenic tour of the old site of the World Trade Center, and asks "Hey, why isn't there a building here?"
|9.8.06 @ 2:52PM|#
This is a pretty awesome example of just how ineffective the government is at getting something accomplished. Good lesson for us all. And yeah, why not just rebuild them again. I liked the twin towers.
|9.8.06 @ 2:55PM|#
...two large pools in the footprints of the Twin
Towers...stopped in May when it became clear that the project was
going to cost more than $1 billion. ...visitors should be charged
an entrance fee to cover the pools� estimated annual operating cost
of $49 million.
Over a billion dollars? That's 1,000 millions. For 2
pools? With annual operating costs of $49 million? That's more
than the operating budget of most decent-sized cities. That's
preposterous, if not downright obscene.
|9.8.06 @ 3:01PM|#
...why not just rebuild them again.
Why not just not? Especially since it looks like the market's going
to take care of tanking this one...
The doubt stems mostly from the inability of the Port Authority
of New York and New Jersey...to convince business tenants to buy
into a building on a site that has twice been attacked by
terrorists
|9.8.06 @ 3:05PM|#
God damn it already! Auction off the land and let whoever buys it build whatever the hell they want.
MAX HATS|9.8.06 @ 3:12PM|#
I sure as hell wouldn't want to work there. Might as well paint a bullseye on the thing.
|9.8.06 @ 3:25PM|#
I wholeheartedly agree with Lord Duppy, which to me is the only course of action to take. Unless you are a grandstanding politician, of course.
|9.8.06 @ 3:30PM|#
And yeah, why not just rebuild them again.
Because they epitomized everything that was bad about architecture
in the 70s (not that the proposals for the replacement buildings
are any better).
|9.8.06 @ 3:46PM|#
What Seamus said.
All of the factors that should be foremost in planning for the site
- economic viability, access, the experience of people who will
work in it, or live near it, or work nearby, the niche it will fill
in the neighborhood-city-regional economy - have been marginalized
in favor of b.s. tee-vee driver concerns like the desire to build
big, its appearance as a sculpture, the skyline view for the
NYC-based tee-vee series that will be shot in the future, and the
conceit that building a certain way will somehow stick it to Al
Qaeda.
|9.8.06 @ 4:35PM|#
I agree that the market should deal with it. I hope whoever buys
rebuilds, naturally using the technology developed from the
analysis of the failures of the structure and the safety
issues.
Only makes them 10 stories taller.
|9.8.06 @ 5:28PM|#
Because they epitomized everything that was bad about
architecture in the 70s (not that the proposals for the replacement
buildings are any better).
Actually, they're supposedly making the site fit into the
neighborhood, with streets and shopping rather than empty plazas
and platforms - that sounds better to me.
The "auction off the site" idea is silly - for one thing, Larry
Silverstein would probably not go along with that, nor would the
victims' survivors. You just can't get away with pretending that
this is some run-of-the-mill plot of land.
|9.8.06 @ 5:41PM|#
As much as I dislike Ray Nagin, he had a point about this hole in the ground . . .
|9.8.06 @ 5:43PM|#
"You just can't get away with pretending that this is some
run-of-the-mill plot of land."
...Then make the thing a National park/monument. The govt. can buy
off the guy with the 99 year lease, plunk down a big ol' hunk of
granite with something meaningful etched into it and leave the rest
green and clean. Cheaper in the long run and the only cost is to
cut the grass and run the squatters off now & then.
|9.8.06 @ 8:04PM|#
rhwyun,
They have incorporated some good urbanist ideas into the design,
like the reconnection of the street through the superblock, but the
bare 20 story (yes, really) shealth of blast-proof concrete around
the base of the Freedom Tower is going to swamp any Jacobsian
energy in its Urban Renewal brutalist immensity.
That thing is going to kill any street life that even attempts to
poke its head up. And it is only necessary because they insist on
putting up a sculpture with a heavy-handed peak elevation figure
and an "inspiring" design when viewed from the suburbs, or through
a teevee screen.
Office buildings can be pretty, they can be immense, they can be
imposing, but they can never, by themselves, be a monument to
anything but subsidized office space. The site should HAVE a
monument among the buildings; it should not try to make the site
itself into the monument.
|9.8.06 @ 8:08PM|#
Above ten or fifteen stories at most, the visual design of a
building is imperceptible to the people walking by it. The
experience the ground floor or two, then a handful of stories above
that, and then it's just a tall building. That concrete is all
they're going to see.
For the people on the sidewalk, the Freedom Tower is going to be
nearly indistinguishable from the walls of a prison. Now that's
irony.
|9.8.06 @ 8:26PM|#
If Silverstein Properties owns the property then I'm surprised that anyone from this playing field would dare question or recommend what they do with it. If it was your property...
|9.8.06 @ 9:08PM|#
Classic conservatarian comment.
Blissfully unaware of the corporate welfare that underwrites the
project, he argues property rights for the plutocrat.
|9.8.06 @ 9:58PM|#
Yeah, the giant blank wall sucks, but FWIW the "Freedom Tower"
is in the remotest corner of the site - there's nothing on the
other side of it except the West Side Highway and beyond that the
unattractive World Financial Center and Battery Park City.
...Then make the thing a National park/monument.
That works for me, too. A large urban park can be a great asset to
the surrounding blocks if done right. Of course, pigs could also
fly.
|9.8.06 @ 10:02PM|#
God damn, I miss those towers. I still have the "New York: View
Of The World" coffee mug I bought at the observation floor geegaw
shop in 1989.
Every time I look at a pic of the post-9/11 Manhattan skyline, I
keep expecting to see those damned towers there - kinda like a
ghost-limb thing, I suppose...
Windypundit|9.8.06 @ 10:36PM|#
The site should HAVE a monument among the buildings; it
should not try to make the site itself into the
monument.
Wow. I totally agree with joe.
|9.8.06 @ 11:51PM|#
Maybe NYC realtors could rent space in some "Freedom Towers"
planted in lower Manhattan if Gotham's City Faddas and Muddas would
try some actual freedom.
Kevin
|9.11.06 @ 11:04AM|#
God damn, I miss those towers. I still have the "New York:
View Of The World" coffee mug I bought at the observation floor
geegaw shop in 1989.
I only went to the observation floor once (ca. 1980). I remember
loving the fact that I was in one place in Manhattan where I didn't
have to see the ugliness of the World Trade Center. Added bonus, I
got a great view of a truly beautiful building: the Empire State
Building.
Actually, they're supposedly making the site fit into the
neighborhood, with streets and shopping rather than empty plazas
and platforms - that sounds better to me.
I agree; that is better. I'd forgotten that there was a plan to
restore some of the street grid that was obliterated by that
Rockefeller-era boondogle.
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