Click image to enlarge (photo from Daniel Libeskind's web site)
Imagine in the aftermath of the tragic terror attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11, with dozens of buildings damaged or destroyed and thousands of people murdered, that the city and state of New York erected a 1600 foot tall monument to honor... the destroyers. Ludicrous, you say? It could never happen? Well, look at the picture above and you'll see with your own eyes that it is true.
This March 10 Newsweek story documents the selection of the design pictured above as the "winning design for the WTC site." But if it is ever built it will be a tragedy of American cultural mutilation. The designer, Daniel Libeskind, is portrayed as a "revered avant-garde theorist" who never built a real building for the first 20 years of his career. Now his design to rebuild the most important site in modern history is being praised because it is "contemporary" and "innovative design." While I am wholly in favor of these ideas, I can also judge for myself the symbolism of an architectural creation, and this one is abhorrent.
Just look at the towers themselves. The roofs are all slanted toward the epicenter of the destruction of the former towers, and two of them even have additional facets representing the collapse of the floors above. Far fetched you say? Hardly. Look at ground level where the former towers stood and you will see half a dozen prismatic shapes symbolically representing the remains of the collapsed upper floors of the surrounding buildings. And the arc-shaped decorative roof encircling the southwest quadrant of the site represents a radiating shock wave eminating from an implied focal point of destruction.
And one of the centerpieces of the design, the 1600 foot tall latticework tower, bears an eerie resemblance to the sole feature that remained of the original towers - the corner section of the base of one tower. This new tower, with no outer skin and listing to the side of and partially attached to the adjacent building, is a cold steel symbol of architectural destruction.
It is no accident that the tallest structure of this design is lifeless and empty compared to the rest of the new structures which are all less than 70 stories tall. The idea being expressed by this cutting-edge, "world-class radical architect" is that no building (and no man) must dare to rise above those around him. It is a monument not only to death and destruction, but to mediocrity, conformity, and egalitarianism. It is antithetical to everything good that America stands for. It must never be built.
It is time for America to shine a giant spotlight into the night sky in the shape of the letters "H.R." America's WTC redevelopment must be designed by someone else - the real-life incarnation of Howard Roark.
Note- I have been sitting on this story since March due to the more pressing matter of Liberating Iraq.
Posted by JohnGalt at May 9, 2003 11:43 AM