(All of these Hettinga lists elided from the distribution: "'R. A. Hettinga'" <rah@shipwright.com>, Digital Bearer Settlement List <dbs@philodox.com>, dcsb@ai.mit.edu, e$@vmeng.com, mac_crypto@vmeng.com, fork@xent.com, nettime-l@bbs.think.net, irregulars@tb.tf.....) On Sunday, December 29, 2002, at 10:33 AM, Trei, Peter wrote:

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.

"Square footage mandated"? "Told the companies"? It sure would be great if things were just left this way: "It is up to the owner of the property to decide what to do with the property. He can ask for opinions, hire consultants, of course, as he wishes. But the herd has no say on what he does, so long as uniform building standards and zoning regulations are met." (Issues of zoning, safety, and traffic are easily dealt with, and have nothing to do with the various pronouncements about "more square footage must be provided" and "The Mayor prefers at least two towers.") Regrettably, many levels of government and "the public" are involved. I realize that things got very confusing when a quasi-government agency (Port Authority) bought and paid for the original towers--though it then leased the site and towers to another owner, a private individual. If they wanted to own their building, they should not have then leased it to another, then back to themselves, while diverting the monies in the usual government way. So now we have what should be a private land development deal mixed up with government...again. My hunch is that the new towers will never be filled and will turn out to be a business catastrophe (oops, I said "business," when in fact it is the Port Authority, a weird melange of jurisdictions which is probably constitutionally invalid). Many of the occupants have found other office spaces, and many of them have said they are perfectly happy uptown or midtown. Or out in Jersey or Long Island or the other burrows (ObMisspellingDeliberate). Or decentralized out to where people are cheaper to hire. This is what networks are for. Centralizing people into antheap buildings...ugh. I wasn't sorry to see those Bauhaus boxes go.

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.

Or, to many of us, of stupidity.

The WTC was a landmark for a huge part of the city; you could see it easily from most of midtown and downtown.

Hideous boxes.

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.

One hopes not a single fucking dime of taxpayer money will go into rebuilding anything on that site. (Oh, I won't scream if $25,000 is allocated to hire that Chinese architect to replicate her Vietcong wall with the names of the dead so that the weepy ones can do their tracings and all. But nothing more should be spent out of the taxpayer's pocket.) (And to the extent the Port Authority is really a shakedown operation, a gatekeeper, extracting revenues from those who cross into its regime, the use of Port Authority money should be watched carefully. The insurance should cover the rebuilding. If it doesn't, scale back the plans accordingly.) I like the new skyline better. (ObHettinga: Meet the new skyline, same as the old, old one.) But all this yawp coming out of NYC about which of the plans will be selected, how the City wants the towers to be reconstructed, blah blah, is all just an indication of statism. (Ayn Rand loved the Twin Towers, ironically, and typically, and disgustingly. But, then, she thought cigarette smoking was a symbolic affirmation of Man's control of fire and his striving to reify A or Not-A through purity of essence! But, then, she was aynal about a lot of things, such as her support for NASA even though it consumed 50,000 slave-lives to put an American flag on a ball of worthless rock. Hilarious that she died of cancer.) --Tim May "That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms." --Samuel Adams