September 6, 2006

click image to view larger Courtesy Local Projects

Visitors to The Skyscraper Museum this month will be able to approximate an experience of the Twin Towers. In an 11-by-22-foot hall, four acrylic posts mimic the dimensions of architect Minoru Yamasaki’s columns. Illuminated from inside, they are reflected in the permanent stainless-steel floor and chromed ceiling designed by Roger Duffy, and in mirrored walls installed by exhibition designers Local Projects. The repetitive effect gives one the feeling of standing beneath two endlessly tall buildings.  

The installation corresponds with the new exhibition, “Giants: The Twin Towers and the Twentieth Century.” Curator Carol Willis explains that the show is devoted not to 9/11 memories, but rather to the design, planning, and reinvention of Lower Manhattan in the 1960s that culminated in the World Trade Center project. She adds, “This was part of that moment in American history when there was a faith in technology and ambitions of bigness, whether it was the towers or jumbo jets or a moonwalk.”

Models, photographs, and drawings narrate the planning and design process. Additional elements, such as audio clips of people involved in making and working in the Twin Towers, contrast the epic architecture with human experience—a strategy of which the mock plaza is one component. “Our starting point was that people’s experience of the towers is fading, it’s a history,” says Local Projects principal Jake Barton. “We wanted to recreate not just ideas about the towers but the towers themselves in as many facets as possible.”

The Skyscraper Museum will launch a web database of 500 construction photos of the Twin Towers, taken by the buildings’ structural engineer Les Robertson, to complement the show. “Giants” runs through March 4. 

David Sokol