Is there a future for ground zero? - View

Architectural Review, The, Feb, 2003 by Paula Deitz

Following the terrorist attack of September 11 2001, resulting in the collapse of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers, architects and critics world-wide, along with the local leaseholder and planners, voiced immediate concerns about future development. It has become obvious, however, after a long, painful process of public meetings, that to establish a successful masterplan for the 16-acre (6.5 ha) site will require an act of courage beyond the kind of inspired ingenuity that usually moves architecture one notch higher. New York City has understandably become so entangled in the emotional aspects of its human loss that no one appears prepared to separate public and private mourning from the exceptional opportunity presented to make an innovative fresh start that will reintegrate and improve the city fabric.

Having failed to produce a satisfactory plan from its own architects and planners at an earlier stage, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation commissioned seven architectural firms or collaborative teams to offer planning designs for the site. These were unveiled last December with great fanfare in the newly-restored Winter Garden, the sparkling glass barrel-vaulted structure designed by Cesar Pelli in Battery Park City across from Ground Zero, as the World Trade Center site is now known. (The Winter Garden itself had been shattered by the attack.) Given the names of the architects and their reputations for both successful planning and design, the collective outcome was a major disappointment. Although there are some ingenious solutions for transportation networks and cultural amenities new to the neighbourhood, all of the proposals were hostage to the Memorial lobby.

Unfortunately, restrictions placed on the architects by the official brief for the 'Innovative Design Study' tied them to the past, making it impossible for them simply to devise the best and most original plans for a financial district that is also rapidly becoming residential. Now New Yorkers will never know what these minds could have produced under more productive and liberating circumstances, None of the architects went against the programme's 'strong preference for preserving the footprints of the twin towers for memorial or memorial related elements'. In truth, the towers were always a mistake of urban design principles -- too large, too tall, and set in a windswept empty plaza. The fact that the city must now be saddled for ever with their gigantic footprints is counter to the spirit of renewal and survival so well exemplified by cities in war-torn Europe after the Second World War. In reality, these spaces are not burial sites and, therefore, should not be treated as virtual hallowed ground.

Another of the stipulations called for a restored skyline 'to provide a significant, identifiable symbol ... a new icon for New York City'. Four of the presentations proposed the tallest buildings in the world, and not only the tallest but also the safest -- with alternative corridors and stairways in case of emergency. Has nothing been learned as a result of September 11? No building that tall, no matter how 'green' and sustainable, is safe, and the best memorial is to guarantee that future employees are not plagued by anxiety. As these architects know, towers do not have to be tallest to be elegant and urban.

The brief was right in recognizing how the area had become more residential since the construction of the Twin Towers, citing both the Park Avenue-like apartment houses around public squares in Battery Park City and the continuing rehabilitation of surrounding commercial buildings into residences. Also, the programme wisely called for reinstating the criss-crossed street system destroyed by the construction of the Twin Towers in order to create new commercial areas and a circulation pattern that would integrate the old lower Manhattan with Battery Park City and the Hudson River beyond. (A glance just across the river to New Jersey reveals the rapidly developing business quarter of Jersey City indicating that maybe a bridge should be the city's priority since the area is still only directly accessible by boat and train.) New York is not the most beautiful city in the world, but it has an electric environment and retains the pioneer spirit going back to its Dutch settlers who first colonized this neighbourhood with its narrow winding streets. What give the district its beauty are its density and the long canyons of light between towers. What is called for is a new and exciting complex of buildings that will become seamless with their surroundings and serve the public with commercial, cultural and residential facilities. Perhaps the most painful idea for the city to face is the need to make the former World Trade Center completely disappear.

Although none of the architects was invited to design the actual memorial -- the subject of a later international competition -- they all attempted to suggest one within their overall planning designs. Daniel Libeskind, who recalls his own shipside view of downtown New York as a teenage immigrant, was so impressed by the survival of the towers' slurry walls that he retained them and sunk the footprints below a cluster of prismatic glass buildings, the spire of the tallest housing an interior forest. (So-called public gardens in upper stories of buildings were another unrealistic theme of several proposals in a city where you cannot even go to a dentist in Rockefeller Center without showing a photo ID.) In addition to a museum for September 11, the configuration of Libeskind's structures allowed for an annual shaft of direct sunlight to mark the anniversary of the attack.