R. A. Hettinga[SMTP:rah@shipwright.com] wrote:
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I wonder what people, especially from New York City, think about the new proposals for Lower Manhattan and World Trade Center site that came out this week.
My qualifications: I lived in NYC when I was a little kid, and in Manhattan from the end of college until I moved to Massachusetts 14 years ago. I used to work at 101 Barclay Street, directly across the street from 7 WTC. I've been up the towers many times - I used to take friends from out of town up to the observatory, and dates to Windows on the World. I'd visit the concourse for lunch, and hang out at a bar halfway up the north tower after work. What do I think? I think they're one hell of a lot better than the first batch, which came out last summer. They lowered the square footage mandated, and told the companies to be a lot more imaginative. One thing I liked in particular was that most of the designs weren't afraid to go high into the sky this time around. Building high is an expression of confidence. The WTC was a landmark for a huge part of the city; you could see it easily from most of midtown and downtown. I like the Foster design best. The SOM, Libeskind, and United Architects designs are also very good. The THINK and Peterson designs leave me kind of cold. I don't much like the Richard Meier (tictactoe) design. I worry about designs which require a huge amount of maintenance (Libeskind's sky forests), which I can't see being maintained more than a decade or so, or which devote so much to memorial that 40 years from now they will seem over the top (Foster has a huge area which is supposed to be restricted to victim's family members). My own initiial idea was to rebuild the towers as they were, but in goldtone instead of silver. Now, I'd like to be a little more respectful of the pre-WTC street grid (If you weren't actually going to the WTC, it was a huge obstacle to get around, either driving or on foot). But I still want towers which rise far above the skyline. Peter