The World Trade Center’s tragic end on Sept. 11 has only made the truth about the seven-building complex more awkward. It was ugly.
Lording it over more graceful skyscrapers at the tip of Manhattan, the center’s twin 110-story buildings were like upstart, uncouth neighbors. Tourists flocked to the towers not to admire them but to enjoy the view from the highest observation deck in the city.
“They never should have happened,” architecture critic Paul Goldberger wrote in 1979, when the towers were little more than 5 years old. The square, unadorned edifices were “pretentious,” “arrogant” and “utterly banal,” he declared.
For the last four months, such sentiments have been muted out of respect for the nearly 2,900 people who were killed when the buildings collapsed. But now that New Yorkers have begun to argue over rebuilding the site, it is hardly surprising that no one wants to replicate Minoru Yamasaki’s original, unloved design.
As a wall label at an ambitious exhibition of 45 proposals for the site puts it, “Let’s not even consider remembering. What for?”
Abundance of ideas
The prospect of designing not just one building but an entire urban ensemble on one of the choicest pieces of property in America is enough to keep any architect bent over a drafting table late into the night. Some of the ideas that have been unveiled so far show the unmistakable signs of caffeine-fueled wee-hour inspiration.
New York architect Nishan Kazazian has proposed that all of Manhattan be turned into a museum, a notion that he readily admits is a fantasy. Historically important buildings would be left standing, but the rest of the island would be returned to its original state and become a park. A laser sculpture in the shape of an upside-down pyramid would commemorate the World Trade Center site.
“Fantasy can be part of the healing process,” he said. “New realities often have their roots in idealized fantasy.”
Similarly fanciful schemes are also part of “A New World Trade Center: Design Proposals,” which brings together established and up-and-coming architects in a show that runs through Feb. 17 at the Max Protetch gallery in the city’s Chelsea neighborhood.
For example, the firm Jakob + MacFarlane proposed that the World Trade Center site be turned into a new World Peace Center, dominated by sinuous red and green towers that curve into the sky like twisting blades of grass. As a kind of public emotional massage, electronic messages such as “LOVE” or “MEMORY” would move up and down the towers.
Another proposal, by the Acconci Studio, would contain as much office space as the twin towers, but in a single, vast building. In a display of questionable taste, the building would be riddled with holes — “pre-shot, pre-blown-out, pre-exploded,” as the architects’ commentary explains. The result resembles a hunk of gray metal Swiss cheese.
Some sound ideas
But amid the jokes and strained attempts at profundity, many architects have come up with serious proposals that blend new office space with a memorial to the victims of the worst terrorist attack in history.
“This is the first flowering of the first ideas for the site,” said Robert Ivy, the editor of Architectural Record and one of the curators of the show. “It may spark debate, it may generate ideas. The purpose is to start or contribute to the conversation of what should happen next.”
Among the 45 architects with projects on display are Michael Graves, one of the high priests of Post-Modernism; Todd Williams and Billie Tsien, designers of the new American Folk Art Museum in New York; and Daniel Libeskind, an American architect best known for his Jewish Museum in Berlin, where he practices.
One of the most moving entries is from Samuel “Sambo” Mockbee, a Mississippi architect who received a MacArthur “genius” grant in 2000. Lying in a hospital bed, Mockbee sketched a plan that includes two towers that are taller than the original trade center. Between the towers is a pit 911 feet deep; the depth represents the date of the terrorist attacks. At the bottom is a reflecting pool with a place of worship.
Mockbee died in December, shortly after completing the design.
Although memorials feature in almost all of the proposals, some family members of the victims have argued that the entire trade center site should be preserved as a tribute to the dead. That view finds few supporters among architects.
“You have to rebuild,” said Brad Cloepfil, a Portland architect whose design for the St. Louis Forum for Contemporary Art is under construction. “You cannot leave that big a void in the city of Manhattan. Manhattan is about people.”
Cloepfil’s proposal envisions a perimeter of roughly 30-story buildings around a central square, in which three large enclosures would commemorate the attack. One of the spaces would be set aside for worship; another would be devoted to celebrating the lives of the victims. The final, and largest, space would be “a place of memory, to pause and reflect,” according to the architect.
“The primary thing is to bring people and life back to the site,” said Cloepfil, principal designer of Allied Works Architecture. “That’s the greatest memorial there could be.”
In addition to its overbearing size, the World Trade Center was often criticized for its sense of separateness from the vibrant street life of New York. Thoroughfares were blocked off to make room for the trade center, breaking down the tight network of Lower Manhattan’s streets.
Now, architects see a chance to restore the old street system. Michael Graves submitted a simple proposal consisting of an old map of Lower Manhattan, its pre-trade-center street layout intact. At the site of the twin towers, he proposes building an institute of peace.
Rising above
Likewise, Dan Kaplan, of the prominent New York firm Fox and Fowle, weaves city streets throughout his proposal, which would leave the footprints of the twin towers as voids. Replacing the behemoths of the trade center would be a variety of office buildings of 30 to 40 stories, with one lone exception stretching up to 80 stories to form a pinnacle on the skyline.
Kaplan is realistic about the chances that his ink-and-paper proposal will become concrete and steel. Yet a sense of optimism pervades the show. Like Chicago’s rise from the ashes of the 1871 fire, the attack on the WTC presents an unlooked-for chance to craft a better tomorrow.
“It was unspeakable what happened there,” said Kaplan. “But we shouldn’t let that romanticize what the World Trade Center was from an urban point of view. One of the things that I hope this show and other efforts will do is to set the bar very high. We can do much better.”
