Is This Really the Future of Ground Zero? Daniel Liebeskind's design for the World Trade Center makes me want to wretch or An unbiased look at that crappy design that shouldn't have won. A last minute "No" from Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg killed off the LMDC's decision to chose THINK team's crystaline towers as the replacement for the World Trade Center. Instead, last week at the World Financial Center Pataki praised Daniel Liebeskind's design as the one chosen to be built after an "open and democratic" process. Liebeskind, most widely known for his Jewish Museum in Berlin (pictured above) has created a vision of the World Trade Center steeped in kitschy concepts: A garden tower 1,776 feet tall, a "wedge of light" created by the buildings that will illuminate on September 11th of each year and a sunken pit for a memorial, leaving the exposed slurry wall of the original World Trade Center as a focal point. The execution of this design will draw visitors down into the Earth, leaving the rest of New York gazing up at an anemic tower jutting out downtown like some emaciated phallus. The surrounding buildings will be clad in Liebeskind's characteristically disheveled gashes and openings, creating an overall picture of what I can only see as jumbled chaos and an open wound as the centerpiece. Rather than reaffirming the spirit of democracy, Liebeskind's plan terrorizes us with the horrors of destruction. While entirely apt for The Jewish Museum, Liebeskind's harsh and deconstructed structures will be a constant reminder of the devastation of September 11th, not a vision of hope that transcends the act. The contender, which was the LMDC's initial choice, was by the THINK team, a New York based firm that proposed a World Cultural Center that mirrored the original Twin Towers, but in a form both ghostly and kinetic that would transform the skyline into something truly exciting and, above all, unique. It is a design that would have been both optimistic and reverent and frankly, exciting. Looking at the latticed towers, I wondered what such structures would look like in real life. Wandering around downtown last week, I imagined them rising up and it was something I knew I wanted to see, wanted to visit and wanted to be a symbol for our city. Liebeskind's design inspires nothing other than anger and disappointment. While the fight for what will be built at the World Trade Center has been a battle, Liebeskind's plan will leave the site looking like a battlefield.

posted by Japhy at 3/04/2003 09:49:00 PM || #