01/22/03 – 1:10 pm
Memorial Esplanade

I vote for Foster's "flame", which would be complemented by a 'Memorial Esplanade' stretching up to the Hudson River.

It would begin at the foot of the Memorial Tower and crossing through the Memorial Park, would pave its way between the footprints of former Twin Towers converted to a Memorial Museum.

The Memorial Park should not become an ordinary urban square separated from the waterfront by one office building ( 2 WFC ) which was subjected to major structural damages due to its proximity to the collapsed WTC (see City of New York damage report).

The Liberty Street and extended Fulton Street, with ferry stops at each end, would connect the Hudson and the East River at the southern and northern outskirts of the Memorial Park..

A new 2 WFC tower could well be situated at the head of the group of buildings located between the Fulton Street and Vesey Street, in the northern extremity of the Grand Promenade.

Is it infeasible?
I don't doubt New York .

Wujek Andre, architect
Vincennes, France

11/26/02 –2:25 pm
Rebuild the Twin Towers

The WTC Twin Towers must be rebuilt taller and stronger. The greatest city in the world deserves the tallest and greatest buildings in the world. That the largest and most inspiring skyscrapers in the world should be replaced by garden variety buildings with flimsy "skyline elements" on top is unthinkable.

For pro-rebuilding links please go to www.put.com/wtc

Alex Butziger ambutziger@hotmail.com

10/13/02 – 12:30 pm
"Old Glory"

Cowards: if we rebuild something smaller out of fear of what the terrorists might target.

Build smaller and the terrorists have taken the land of the "free and brave" from us and "old glory" will mean nothing anymore. Those who fought and died, before us, for our country would be ashamed at proposing to build according to what won't be targeted. They stood on the front line and died for us so we could be free. If we give in, they died in vain. Everything they lost their lives for is not worth even a penny. I am sure they are rolling over in their graves. We will no longer be free or brave if we build smaller.

I see a lot of people feel it shows we are cowards if we building smaller. They will have NOTHING to fear working in the building if we have air watch around the clock at the top of the building. That amounts to moving from one location to the other.

Don't let those before us have died in vain.

I would also like to say that I did not read this forum before...

09/25/02 – 2:05 pm
In response to "Plans of Weakness and Fear" posted 07/26/02.

Originally the Towers were built to show world peace through commerce. A symbol. These 6 new designs look more like the hind end of an ostrich with its head in the sand. They are embarassing. I am no New Yorker, but I do know that this is not what a New Yorker attitude would do. These 6 designs symbolize the victory the terrorist will have. Do not let them win!

Maybe a drive should be put together to raise the money for new, bigger, stronger buildings. I'm sure Americans would back it. I know I would. If the fear of a terrorist attack is still on the minds of possible employees in the new buildings, then the top floors of the new towers could be reserved for the military and National Defense. In case another plane is aimed at the buildings, which is highly unlikely, a gun turret could be put at the top of each building. In the unlikely event that these guns would be used, the American Public would still be happier to have a jet shot down than a city destroyed and thousands of people killed. Architechs, be bold, be strong, and build what the nation and the first world want.

Jason
Los Angeles

I agree with this idea, but have an addition because this is a rare opportunity for NY to do such. Put on the top floors: a defense system, including possibilities for launching long and short range guided missiles and whatever more, capable to protect total of NewYork, like an umbrella against attacks from air. Maybe a suggestion for other USA cities as well.

Rein treinlyn@comcast.net
Florida

09/18/02 –1:31 am
where can I see all of the wtc proposals ???

is there an exhibit being held somewhere in NY??

Marc Aparicio marcaparicio@yahoo.com

09/13/02 –9:46 am
New WTC Design

I enjoy reading the opinions, boy do the architects have a problem! It is sad however that few writers have mentioned that the new buildings should be the safest fire protected structures in the world, allowing occupants to exit safely to a place of safety in minutes not hours. I agree that the memorial should be at a high floor level but I fear this would be very distressing for some and would restrict access to the public when the place was closed. I work with a civil engineering and architectural firm in Ireland and I enjoy your Web site very much.

Kind Regards to All.
Pearsey Smyth pearsesmyth@eircom.net
Ireland

08/06/02 – 5:59pm
The World Trade Center As Symbol: Why was it attacked?

How can design respond to the destruction of a significant symbol?

The World Trade Center was a potent SYMBOL, at least in the minds of the terrorists who attacked it. In a nutshell,

the World Trade Center symbolized GLOBALIZATION.

The World Trade Center symbolized a liberal, democratic, capitalist world order, an order largely constructed and maintained by the United States since World War II. At a deeper level, the Center symbolized the Enlightenment's dream of liberation through science and technology -- recall that the WTC's engineering was state-of-the-art. And the World Trade Center symbolized materialism, the 20th century's dream of salvation-as-material-comfort, in-the here-and-now.

The World Trade Center symbolized a very particular, modern, Western, and imperialistic metanarrative -- a metanarrative which, in its time, claimed universal appeal, aspiring to global reach and scope. A metanarrative "for export."

Some of the core values of this Modernist, Western, liberal metanarrative are fundamentally at odds with the core values of most of the world's traditional cultures and religions. Every day the West's liberalizing metanarrative undermines other cultures' core conceptions of self, freedom, community, and salvation. The West absorbed the culturally corrosive effects of its self-generated Modernism over the span of centuries, whereas non-Western cultures have experienced Modernism forcibly introduced by Westernizing elites over the span of mere decades.

The design proposals for a new World Trade Center now prove ambivelant and squeamish, for the simple reason that for the last few decades Western societies have become shot through-and-through with self-doubt.

Do ANY of the architects who've submitted WTC design proposals believe in Globalization? Do ANY of these architects believe the world will necessarily become a better place through commerce, free trade, and the spread of Western, materialist consumer-culture?

Do ANY architects practicing today honestly believe in liberation through science and technology, the way members of the Bauhaus and Le Corbusier did? In today's cultural climate, even self-avowed high-tech and neo-modernist architects usually employ new technology as mere fetish, as mere opportunity for aesthetic experiment, not social salvation.

Do ANY architects practicing today believe in metanarratives?

The terrorists certainly did.

Are Western intellectuals and architects all so terribly post-modernist now, quite ready to leave the difficult, serious thinking about the Global World Order to terrorists flying planes that become bombs?

Perhaps the greatest irony of September 11th, one I have not yet seen commented upon, is the simple fact that the terrorists attacked a MODERNIST building. The terrorists did not attack the former Sony building, nor did they attack any other icon of post-modern pastiche. As far as we know, they made absolutely no plans to attack Hollywood, the epi-center of post-modern media culture.

Perhaps as cultural diagnosticians the terrorists are more astute than the average English lit professor: THEY know the West is still a resolutely MODERNIST civilization, even if the average literary humanist does not.

Postmodernism died on September 11th (if it ever was truly living) -- and with it died postmodernist irony.

There is absolutely no question that rebuilding the World Trade Center is the defining American design challenge of the decade, perhaps the century. Or, at the very least, it SHOULD be.

What would a design of genius accomplish?

FIRST, programmatically:
A design of genius would not forget the symbolic magnitude of the attack, because it would not neatly sanitize and compartmentalize the WTC site into commercial, civic, and memorial zones.

A salient feature of the six official designs proposed in July was the studied seperation -- physically, symbolically, aesthetically -- of the memorial from the new commerical office space. The proposed commercial buildings carried little, if any, symbolic "weight", beyond the superficial inclusion of 1,500 foot transmission antennas. A design of genius would integrate the memorial and commercial buildings into a single, coherent statement. But needless to say designs of this sort are never produced by committee.

The obvious solution is to hold an open international design competition, one that welcomes the submissions of hundreds, if not thousands, of architects -- akin to the competition which gave France and Paris the Centre Pompidou. Frightening, yes; but how else does America honestly expect to get a design worthy of the WTC site?

SECOND, thematically:
The design brief should demand a work of art that:

-- successfully fuses spaces for private grief with commerical buildings that function as bold, public symbols

-- succeeds in creating both a uniquely American urban place for national mourning...

-- but so too creates an international, global space, one that revisits the universalizing, Modernist ideals symbolized by the original World Trade Center

Revisiting these ideals means taking Modernism seriously, but not uncritically.

Once again, the larger symbolic issue at stake is globalization. As such, the design brief should demand that architects begin addressing how a new, different set of buildings might symbolically represent a DIFFERENT kind of globaliation -- perhaps more democratic, more pluralist, less driven by profit and greed.

Perhaps a form of globalization that takes workers into account -- not merely a World Trade Center, nor even a "Fair Trade Center" (as suggested in Ben Gallant's previous posting), but rather a FAIR WAGE Center. Or a FAIR WORLD Center, a JUST WORDLD Center.

After all, the victims of the terrorist attack on the WTC share class-status with the victims of globalization: they are people who have to work for a living.

Imagine all the people, sharing all the World.... You may say that I am a dreamer, but I'm not the only one Some day I hope you'll join us, and the world will live (and work, and create) as one....

Laurence Koppe laurencekoppe@hotmail.com
Paris, France

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