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The Pits, Part II Right about now, you wish the Germans would focus on rebuilding Baghdad. Daniel Libeskind’s WTC II buildings claim the rare distinction of being less pleasing to the eye than the cranes and derricks that will put them up. But believe it or not, there were designs that lost to this one, which might feel something like losing both ends of a home-away series to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Here is a quick—but not quick enough—look at the top runners-up. Sir Norman Foster’s design featured a pair of 1,764-foot jagged, asymmetrical towers literally bent in the middle. Right-o, Sir Norman. This time without the mescaline. It says here a winning design should consist of more than a nostalgic view of the original towers through a toy kaleidoscope. United Architects entered a collection of odd-shaped buildings with a 1,620-foot centerpiece inspired by a bottle of A1 Steak Sauce. Andy Warhol would be proud. The surrounding buildings are either leaning or bent here too, bringing forth the powerful themes of chaos, instability, a falling Dow, and a model that got jostled in the limo on the way over. A pair of 1,665-foot towers featuring a latticework frame designed by the THINK group was handpicked by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and was the odds-on favorite to win. Think again. Futuristic and unusual though it was, the THINK entry lacked the anarchy, wastefulness, repulsiveness, and ambivalence necessary to beat out the Libeskind juggernaut. An unabashed celebration of Tinker Toys, the defeat of the THINK entry broke the hearts of six year old developers everywhere. Yet countless anonymous designs were nonetheless beaten out by these and still other atrocities. How great could it feel to finish behind a couple of buildings shaped like a tic-tac-toe board? Yes, the Meier, Eiseman, Gwathmey, and Holt design--featuring two 1,111-foot tic-tac-toe-like structures--finished in the final five. Ironic for a game that almost always ends in a tie. You have to be grateful Messrs. Meier, Eiseman, Gwathmey, and Holt weren’t in Atlantic City playing roulette the night before. Or worse still, getting a lap dance. Supposedly, this competition was open to the public. Yeah, it was open to the public like the Sean Penn/Madonna wedding. Somebody, anybody, look me square in the face and tell me they couldn’t have found some local kid out of Pratt, Parsons, or Cooper Union to blow the competition out of the water. At this very moment, there are no fewer than a half-dozen superior designs in my own living room assembled from Lego. My four year old daughter wasn’t even looking for the awards, the high-profile recognition, or the bump in business for her fledgling firm—just the satisfaction of a job well done and a pack of Reese’s Pieces. She’s already got a concept for a Lincoln Logs WTC. Truth is, it took a plan like Libeskind’s to make us appreciate the aesthetic beauty of the original World Trade Center—no mean feat. The Parachute Jump in Coney Island is looking better every day and may yet rear its ugly head as a dark horse candidate. This motley crew of designers has done for architecture what Cardinals Egan and Law have done for religion. For the time being, WTC stands for “What’s this crap?” And let us not forget the real victims here—traffic reporters in helicopters. But there is hope. None of this can go down—or up—until developer Larry Silverstein gives his final approval. And for those of you who don’t know, Mr. Silverstein is tied up right now in a little dispute. While the world’s self-proclaimed architectural geniuses were busy rendering fantastic visions of some of the world’s tallest buildings, Silverstein was busy making insurance fraud a high art. Yes, Larry—the World Trade Center was hit in two separate terrorist attacks like John Lennon was murdered by four separate Mark David Chapmans. Folks, let’s slow it down a minute here. This is not a set of shelves we can take back to IKEA. Once it’s built, we will have to live with these structures for a very, very long time—maybe even months. Perhaps the whole problem was the committee process and the sub-mediocrity that process brings with it. But that very process may be our salvation. Experience says Libeskind and company are likely to live on only as asterisks in textbooks written by Libeskind and company, while newer, fresher, more hideous designs will come and go like a flash in a Girls Gone Wild video. By the time anything is actually built at the site, Al Sharpton will be pushing a constitutional amendment so he can serve a third term as US President. It’s high time we took a deep breath and a lesson from the Baseball Hall of Fame Committee. What we really need here is a five-year waiting period. Click here to rant back. |