PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

WTC Site Redevelopment Decision Nears
by deadrockstar Saturday, Feb. 22, 2003 at 6:01 PM

After months of wrangling, the decision will soon be made between the two WTC site redevelopment finalists: Studio Libeskind and THINK. Will that be the end of the story?

The Associated Press reports that a group of officials will be deciding between the two finalists of a competition for designs to redevelop the former site of the World Trade Center.

These eight lucky beauraucrats will be representing the the governor of New York, the mayor of New York City, the Lower Manhattan Lower Manhattan Development Corp. (LMDC), and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

The AP generously describes the two entries: "One design lays bare the foundation of the original World Trade Center and surrounds it with spiky skyscrapers. The other suspends concert halls and art galleries inside twin latticework towers."

Fortunately for us, the LMDC maintains a web site enabling us to gawk with dismay at the two most-favored entries:
Studio Libeskind - spiky skyscrapers
THINK - "twin latticework towers"

Follows my reworking of the above description:
One design shamelessly manipulates the shock and sadness of New Yorkers by evoking a postmodern nightmare-landscape of angular buildings arrested in a state of perpetual semi-collapse. The other suspends a handful of cultural centers hundreds of feet above the city in an obsessed paranoiac fantasy: the strongest safe in the world is made more invulnerable only by leaving it empty.

Does anyone remember the Peterson/Littenberg plan? Does anyone remember what New York looks like? Can anyone forget what the city looked like falling apart?

The Peterson/Littenberg design did justice to how the city sees itself and undid much of the fracture the superblock of the WTC inflicted on the city. The two finalist designs have none of the sensitivity for pedestrian scale or historical context that is so evident in this beautiful plan. Check it out, and wonder why the favorite plans of the beauraucrats are pandering to fear and memory, when such a vision of the future of downtown remains so close at hand.

In case you missed the link, here's another:
Peterson/Littenberg - "elegant Art Nouveau / City Beautiful masterpiece"

But a hope remains: if these plans don't satisfy Larry Silverstein, the holder of a 99-year lease on the property which replaces the WTC, the design will be up in the air again. Maybe some prodding from the public can help him make a decision that will heal the fabric of the city, rather than inflict it with fresh scars.

Here's the info:

Mr. Larry A. Silverstein
Silverstein Properties, Inc.
530 5th Ave. 18th Fl.
New York, NY 10036

Tel: 212-551-7300
Fax: 212-687-0067

Email: kmurphy@empire.state.ny.us

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