What Works, What Doesn't

Architectural Record, February 2003

A lot of people thought contemporary architecture was too cool and self-absorbed to contend with loss, that it had no language for inspiration. The plans presented December 18 changed all that. For a first pass (let’s not forget) that’s quite an accomplishment.

As exhibit-visitors throngs and website prowlers dig deeper into the plans (www.renewNYC.com), they marvel at how the Meier team sweeps a plaza from Ground Zero to the healing precincts of the Hudson. They ponder the beefy bridges that shoot across the scurrying crowds in SOM’s transit hub. They love—and hate—the jagged forms of Libeskind’s museum tipping into the tower’s abyss. As accomplished as they were, the plans did their greatest public service by testing assumptions that have congealed into orthodoxy over the months. The plans’ approach to memorials and to skyscrapers says a great deal about what works and what doesn’t, both in terms of the designs themselves and what they say about the planning “consensus” that drove them.

The memorial: Beware a battle of the biggest
Honoring the extent of loss in this tragedy has turned the memorial into the planning linchpin. Each team raised questions about the memorial even as they offered compelling visions for it. Peterson/Littenberg drew up a pedestrians-only commemorative precinct, separated from daily city life by a layer of buildings and a high wall. Foster’s plan also erects a high wall around the footprints and accesses the bedrock 70 feet below by a monumental ramp system. It seems a good idea to remove the distractions of the city, to make possible a dignified, contemplative space. But can this void interrupting the daily life of the city be seen as anything but a scar? Can such a monumental place possibly offer a message transcendent enough to retain its hold on us as the terror attacks inevitably take their place in history?

In respecting the 200-foot-square footprints of the towers, which was a pre-existing planning consensus, and drawing the inevitable linkage between them, several designs created a very large and monumental precinct that would be off-limits to almost anything but the commemorative program. That expansiveness, in turn, stymied efforts to more gracefully thread the rebuilt site into the surrounding network of streets and blocks. It’s why the site remains a distinct enclave in most of the schemes, And it’s why you see big open plazas in schemes by Foster, Think (the Sky Park variation) and United Architects. The Meier Eisenman Gwathmey Holl team actually defined the memorial precinct as even larger, stretching up into gardens in monumental openings high above the street and fingering out across the Battery Park City development and into the Hudson River. Studio Libeskind’s scheme rejects the footprints in favor of exposing the length of the slurry wall that held back the Hudson River as the towers collapsed on top of it. This, he said, was the heroic artifact, not the footprints.

We should beware a commemorative battle of the biggest. It should not be surprising that survivors would define significance in terms of size as well as in the use of ruins. This is what happens in the absence of sensitively led design dialogue.

Designers have learned from experience that significance is best conveyed by art and design, not size. Landscape architect Diane Balmori, who accompanied Ground Zero stakeholders on a tour of Berlin monuments, was particularly moved by a Holocaust memorial that involved only the painting of vanished Jewish owners’ names on building stoops.

To its credit (and with the involvement of designers), the LMDC committee that developed a draft mission statement for the memorial did not demand that the footprints be retained, only respected. Artifacts from the destruction need only be considered for inclusion, it added. Too bad the mission statement came too late to inform the program that was given the seven architect teams.

The teams also demonstrated the validity of other memorializing approaches. By extending the precinct of the historic St. Paul’s church into the site, a pocket park by SOM suggests a commemorative possibility that is both moving and authentic. Since September 11th, the historic church has offered spiritual solace and physical respite for rescuers, victims, and volunteers. Studio Libeskind’s Wedge of Light, which would focus shadowless beams of the sun at the annual moment of the attacks, is also worth considering because of it’s potential to movingly—-if only momentarily—-transform the daily life of the city into a mass commemorative event.

Great ideas, sure. But how to advance key rebuilding decisions while keeping commemorative possibilities open? A series of charettes or competitions could help everyone understand what is possible on small or large sites, and a clear approach may emerge that does not entangle future possibilities for the entire site. Such an approach would also permit the city to wait awhile for its realization.

Waiting may seem cold-blooded, but priorities change as grief evolves, and a clearer view of what this memorial should say and how it should deal with the unique senselessness of the tragegy will emerge over time. (Significant memorials have been erected a generation or more after the event.)

Who needs another world’s tallest?
Foster’s proposal alone won over many skyscraper rejectionists with its haunting elegance. It is the most beautiful he has ever done—and beauty counts in restoring the terrible gap in the skyline. Foster’s approach recognizes that if you want to set aside a great deal of the site for a memorial and still accommodate a lot of office square footage, a super-tall building is not an unreasonable answer. I am not among the naysayers who think it will take a decade or more for downtown to support significant new square footage. Strategic investments must be made (in transportation, in the mix of uses, in the environment) and a business case must be made. (Is the city working on this?) Even now, tenants would quickly snatch up the millions of available square feet in Manhattan if landlords let go of their boom-year asking-rent expectations.

Real-estate experts say the low-energy, high-amenity buildings Foster has built in Europe can’t work financially in America. Give Foster the chance to prove them wrong. We already know that it could be the most technically sophisticated skyscraper on earth. Its triangulated form contributes to a uniquely strong structure with the kind of redundancy tall-building critics seek.

Let United Architects refine its skyscraper scheme, too. It’s less radical than it looks. Its floor plates respect current leasing norms, while offering daylight, views and other humane amenities lacking in the disfiguring generic developer boxes that litter the neighborhood. Its largest floors will even accommodate the financial-business trading arenas that turn normal office buildings into windowless, overbearing behemoths. It’s easy to pooh pooh the skygardens and streets-in-the-air as architects’ fantasies. But with twisting haunches hoisting its great bulk high, the surrounding streets can flow into a rich multilevel topography of plaza, stores, and rail station. Akin to Grand Central Terminal, it choreographs urban spectacle out of the everyday movement of people.

If the December plans demonstrated anything it is the power of an architecture of passion and commitment to involve people in testing and sorting out ideas. LMDC tirelessly and condescendingly touted how public and open its process was. It spent months building assumptions by polling everyone in sight and creating a laundry list of goals around those items for which there seemed to be consensus. In only a few weeks, the seven teams blew many of those assumptions out of the water.

It’s time officials learned from this experience. At least three teams should be asked to explore their ideas further. My candidates are Libeskind, United Architects, and Foster. We can’t do that, say officials. We have got to get a plan so that we can get on with the rebuilding. Hello? Nothing else about the process to date has so moved the debate. No political leader, no business guru, no planning methodology has so engaged people in questions that range from the prosaic to the wrenchingly personal. Pick up that phone. And pay decently this time.