NYTimes: "A Tower That Sends A Message of Anxiety, Not Ambition"

[Hissyspit]

http://www.nytimes.com:80/2007/02/19/arts/design/19towe.html

Architecture
A Tower That Sends a Message of Anxiety, Not Ambition



A rendering of the Freedom Tower plaza at West and Vesey Streets.

By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
Published: February 19, 2007
Ground zero has gone through its own kind of war fatigue. With every step forward in the reconstruction process, New Yorkers were asked to buy into the rhetoric of renewal, only to be confronted by images that reflect a city still in a state of turmoil and delusion.

- snip -

But the widely anticipated announcement that Gov. Eliot Spitzer will support the construction of the Freedom Tower may signal an end to any hope that a broad vision — or even a level of sanity — can be restored to a project tainted by personal hubris and political expediency.

- snip -

Hurriedly redesigned more than a year ago after terrorism experts questioned its vulnerability to a bomb attack, the Freedom Tower, with its tapered bulk and chamfered corners, evokes a gargantuan glass obelisk. Its clumsy bloated form, remade by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, vaguely recalls the worst of postmodernist historicism. (It’s a marvel that its glass skin hasn’t been recast in granite.)

- snip -

If built, the lamentable Freedom Tower would be a constant reminder of our loss of ambition, and our inability to produce an architecture that shows a genuine faith in America’s collective future rather than a nostalgia for a nonexistent past.

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[Ignacio Upton]

1. Why must this building be so ugly?

Spitzer should not reaffirm Pataki's pet project. Rename the damn building and redesign it.

[snot]

3. prolly 'cause no Dems were on the committee--

Several brilliant plans were submitted by unimpeachable sources, but mediocrity prevailed.

[TomClash]

7. Because everything Silverstein touches is garbage nt

[TheWatcher]

13. Because it is a perfect representation of what this country has become

Ugly, Insane, Impractical, Misguided, and completely Out Of Control.

Babylon would be proud.

No, it would be ENVIOUS.

[TankLV]

30. I don't think it's ugly at all...

I would have preferred they rebuilt the original WTC towers - but bigger and taller!

A real "fuck you" to the terrorists...

But the term "freedom fries tower has got to go...

To each his own...

The Eiffle Tower was hated when it was built, too...

And the WTC twins were also not that great to look at from the distance - but they were breakthru architecture for their novel "tube" structure that used the "skin" as "structure" and not just as a decorative "curtain wall" applied to a "skeleton", along with the "natural" growth of the structural form from the bottom towards the top like the trunk of a tree growing into the smaller branches...

It was really a quite amazing building...

[hlthe2b]

2. phallus with a darning needle on the tip...

I'd like to see some of that money go to the 911 workers, who are now dying from various environmental contaminant-related diseases...

[Viva_La_Revolution]

4. It would be a beautiful building if it were 1/3 the size

and ya take that ridiculous needle thing off the top.

[Hissyspit]

5. Even then, not very visionary.

I wasn't a fan of the original Liebeskind concept for the tower and it was better than this. Such a disappointment.

[TomClash]

9. The neighborhood be damned

It's too big, too hideous and too unrelated to its surroundings. There's no need for a Bush phallic symbol - we already know he's a dick.

The Freedom Tower is a joke.

[Fovea]

6. It will always be

the needle-dick tower to me.

[PBass]

8. Well, the original twin towers were ugly too. Everyone said so. (nt)

[Fovea]

15. Yes. I agree, the twin towers were a

New York eyesore.

But before we build another megalo-scraper, American Architects need to search their souls as well as their egos.

Sure, it will make a 'bold statement,' but so does the end of an umbrella shoved up one's nostril. That doesn't mean it is a welcome one.

[Leopolds Ghost]

19. The sad thing is, neoliberal Dem millionaires who control Manhattan

Have allowed them to rip up the entire area of Midtown, between Penn Station and Columbus Circle, from Hell's Kitchen thru Times Square to Bryant Park, where all the theaters and shops used to be, and turn it into a cross between Bunker Hill and Las Vegas.

With sheer glass skyscrapers and gaudy, mall-like megastores -- and the techno-futurists declare this "the future of urbanism". Then they wonder why Manhattanites no longer go out on foot anymore.

Tom Wolfe recently wrote an NYT editorial on how the concept of traditional urbanism has been destroyed in New York, and replaced with a vision of super-rich people living in 40-story gated and secure "icetray architecture" condominiums whose feet never touch the sidewalk.

I think Carl Sagan once wrote a book about that sort of futuristic dystopia.

[Selatius]

10. Every terrorist with an anti-US axe to grind in the whole damn world will gun for that tower.

Because of what Bush has done, those people there will hate us for the next 100 years and longer. Bush has generated an ocean of hate that will not be drained in my lifetime.

[bklyncowgirl]

11. Just paint a great big bullseye on that sucker.

To be perfectly honest, who the hell is going to want to work or rent space in that thing.

My husband fears that once it's built, his employer, the City of New York, may feel compelled to rent space in it to bail out the developers as they did with the original Twin Towers. As his offices are just a few blocks away, he's very concerned that he may end up in it.

That's the day he quits.

[XemaSab]

28. Apparently they've made agreements with the feds for a lot of the proposed space

Part of the outrage: federal workers FORCED to work in a scary building. :(

[blogslut]

12. Looks like a ginormous hypodermic needle

WTF is that thing on the top supposed to symbolize?

[Skidmore]

14. Or an award given in a corporation.

[MamaBear]

16. It's meant to be a transmitter

It's meant to be a transmitter tower for local radio and tv stations. Many of them used to transmit from the old North Tower. Now they are crammed together on the Empire State Building.

Reception was better from the old Tower, or so it seemed to me.

[Leopolds Ghost]

20. Addiction to global resource extraction and hyper-capitalism?

The REAL heroin bosses down in Miami Beach have much prettier condos.

[Marie26]

23. It says: "Freedom is on the march!" nt

[npincus]

17. you can't please everyone...

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2003/09/15/2003067980

but of the original post-9/11 WTC competition entries presented to the public and exhibited in the Wintergarden, the entry by Sir Norman Foster garnered a majority of the public's "votes" , yet did not win. So the idea that the public would select the winning design was a sham. I saw the exhibit myself, and Sir Norman's design was great- the only one that evoked the form and presence of the Twin Towers. The 3-dimensional model showed the design more effectively. What a shame that this one, the public's choice, wasn't picked.


Proposed new skyscraper by Foster & Partners



Site plan by Foster & Partners with "footprints" of former twin towers of World Trade Center in center


When the public weighed in, it favored Sir Norman Foster's "kissing towers," which evoked the original twin towers but left little room for a restored street grid. In the minds of the officials, however, the only feasible alternatives were the World Cultural Center, by the Think team, which included Rafael Vinoly and Frederic Schwartz, and a design by Peterson/Littenberg Architecture and Design. Peterson/Littenberg hurt its cause when Barbara Littenberg, one of the principals, criticized the design competition and rebuilding officials at a public forum, infuriating Tomson and others.

The competition was soon whittled down to Libeskind and Think. Yet the final decision was made less by consensus or by appeal to the public, than by fiat, born of indignation.


http://www.thecityreview.com/wtcnew2.html
This proposal by the world's most famous "high-tech" architect calls for twin, 1764-foot-high towers that would "kiss" at three points. The forms of the towers are based on triangular rather than rectilinear angles. The design is spectacular and its apparently steel and glass faceted facade would perpetuate the sparkling aesthetic of the original twin towers. While the design is certainly dramatic, it is a bit ungainly. The angled towers almost appear to shudder. They are exciting, but perhaps almost too energetic. The notion of the "kiss" skybridges is good, but the design would perhaps be improved if the two towers had a larger separation.

[TankLV]

31. I didn't like Foster's design - too unwieldy and wierd - but that's just my opinion...

They were "interesting" tho.

I don't like much like the design that's going to be built either...

I'm surprised that someone couldn't have come up with a more imaginative solution like the Petronis Towers in Singapore or some other recent towers...

Oh well, it's not my money and I'm not in control, so I don't get to decide...

But armchair quarterbacking is fun, too...

The name has GOT to go...with that name alone, it could be TWO stories tall and it would be a target...

[MonkeyFunk]

33. quibble...

the Petronas towers are in Malaysia, not Singapore.

[negativenihil]

18. bleh

we should have rebuilt the towers as they were ... just one level higher (i think this was Trump's plan?)

[Stephanie]

21. I am right across the street from the site right now.

I can look directly down on it from the window here. Rest assured, this neighborhood is going to empty out again when that tower starts going up. Nobody wants to try to work under those conditions. And nobody wants to be next to, or in, the biggest target on the planet. This tower is assinine and I wish somebody would put a stop to it. It's like a bunch of tourists barged into NYC and decided what should happen with the site. Real New Yorkers would never agree to such a monstrosity. We hate it.

[Marie26]

22. And it's the loss of equality

The twin towers were ugly, but they were equal. It was a symbol of democracy in a way. This monstrosity is a symbol of a fortified empire - soaring high above & dominating the lesser buildings that surround it.

[Bluebear]

24. Will they hang a giant "KICK ME" sign on it?

The world's largest target, just marvelous. :(

[entanglement]

25. It's shockingly ugly - no symmetry, no curves and that eyesore of a 'needle' on top of it

n/t

[Hissyspit]

26. .

[AlCzervik]

27. Am i the only one that doesn't like the name? Bush has forever tainted the

word Freedom and that bulding, please did they actually run that by any actaul new yorkers?

[XemaSab]

29. I think this is a FUGLY tower

but the worst part about the plan is the three towers next to it.

Any one of the four towers seperately would be fine, but together they look totally unrelated to one another... they were all designed by different people with different visions.

If you have the opportunity to build four towers on the site immediately adjacent to Ground Zero, it would be nice if they looked like they belonged together, instead of just happening to be next to each other. You could do something really, really cool... skyscrapers that met and all paid homage to both the missing towers and the existing holes. Instead it's a big meh.

[Hepburn]

32. OMG....it looks like..

..the missing earring of a lap dancer. UGH.