Though the designs are far from final â€" the NYPD, for one, will have a crucial role in determining the ultimate configuration of each building's base and placement â€" they do offer a serous glimpse of what could eventually rise at Ground Zero...
...Given the astounding absence of anything to truly unify this complex, one could hope instead for the kind of bracing but reconcilable tension that makes, for example, Foster's new Hearst headquarters building such a triumph in the way it pits old and new against one another yet toward the same end. Foster, recalling that he was on his way to present designs for that building to the Hearst board of directors when the planes struck on 9/11, spoke meaningfully about how the feelings of that day have commingled with the honor of being chosen for this commission by Silverstein. But he and his colleagues have failed to move beyond their own buildings and engage each other's, or to extend out into the breadth of Ground Zero. That's what they need to do, and what we need, for this hole to become a place."
Comments
World Trade Center
World Trade Center
The diabolic destruction of the Twin Towers in New York was an act as despicable as brazen. It was meant to be as much an affront as abuse. It sought to humiliate a great people and a great democracy into permanent shame.
Retaining the footprints of the towers as a ‘memorial’ and building a new Tower as a replacement would be more of a tacit and ‘permanent’ admission of the victory of the ‘evil’ over the ‘good’ than displaying a spirit of rejuvenation.
Architectural merits apart, the only definitive and forceful statement that a nation can make is to rebuild the Twin Towers exactly as they were and ensure that the cityscape and skyline of the great city is regenerated as if there was no aberration. A great people and a great democracy must demonstrate its undying character in ‘immortality’ of the symbols of its national ethos and not appear to be morally weaker than the forces of terrorism by grasping the opportunity for a new commercial exploitation of land and an Architectural commission.
Prakash M Apte