I don't think it's tired. The point is not to make a cutting-edge statement, but to place a somber reminder there of all who perished. The wall wouldn't be the whole of it in my mind, just part of the memorial park / frontage thing.
As far as the buildings, to be honest, I wish they would build new 100 story towers that look similar to the WTC style-wise...only build three of them and not two or one - simply as a way of saying "fu*k off" to the backwards ass scumbags who fault this country for its wealth and success and want to tear down our symbols as much as anything else.
In addition to a tasteful and somber memorial, the buildings ought to be the "kiss our collective ass" part. And that part should definitely be there IMO.
Have two specially made gigantic flood lights stationed "pointing up" from the grounds as a memorial and a permanent symbol of the remaining "Spirit" of the american peoples UnWillingness to back down and "give in" to the attack.
At night two huge beams of light would stand high into the sky... reminding everyone of why we fight this battle and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again...
First, build new towers. The number doesn't matter, only the quality; they need to build the most advanced, most unique, most innovative, most American towers the world has ever seen. The towers themselves need to send the message that no matter what so-called power the mystics of death think they have, we ultimately have the power to create and live.
As to a memorial, I think it should be something tasteful and simple. I'll make you one wager, though -- someone, or some group, is going to lobby to have the suicide terrorists listed along side the civilians, firemen, an policemen killed in the attacks.
This would take me hundreds of hours. I hardly know where to begin.
One thing not to do: ignore what happened. I have a real problem with the schemes that try to act like nothing ever happened, as some sort of "ultimate defiance."
OK, let's expand a bit: I do not like the idea of more-of-the-same becuase, like it not, for better or worse, America changed that day. Like Guiliani said, there was not only terrible tragedy, but incredible heroism. To ignore the vent by covering it would be to ignore those great people. As another pair of architects said, "don't erase the erasure."
I wouldn't say that a Vietnam memorial-style piece is passé, just that it's not unique to the circumstances. While Maya Lin's work and her Civil Rights Memorial are incredibly powerful, they are becoming "commodities" as everyone wants to make the next big minimal statement, diffusing the impact of the originals. That's not to say I'm for some neo-neo-Classical memorial either. Let the idea determine the aesthetic.
My first murky thoughts about it is to build a kind of anti-memorial. The original "anti-memorial" was erected to mourn the event of WWI. it was a column set in a deep bed of sand. As people walked and stirred over the sand, the sand under the column shifted, and the column slowly sank and eventually disappeared into the sand bed years later (ideally it was supposed to take as long as the war).
I think about the beacon that the towers were (though frankly they weren't so good on the sky line) and the idea of the towers as a symbol of power. I think about how the towers were over-scaled, actually scale-less. I think about how scale-less the event was - immesurable.
One one hand we want to mourn our loss. On the other we want to celebrate our strength. I thought about the idea of a deep square hole in the earth -- a tower in a negative. It could symbolize what we have lost, what the place was reduced to, a well of souls, the abyss of our sorrow. But I wonder of something to symbolize life like water would enter the memorial. I thought about a tower of water, life, hope, fortune.
Maybe the spirit of heroism could change the source of mourning, like how rocks erode under water. Not erase it, just change it, transform it into the effect of our spirit as the rest of the site grows again instead of leaving it as the source of our mourning.
Maybe the tower of water could sit next to the anti-tower, and the water could change the profile of the empty well next to it as it falls and runs off into the it.
On second thought, the water could spring directly out of the well (I was thinking twin-monuments there), which would make more sense.
But this only took 20 minutes. Better ideas would come with more thought and time, and with more talented minds.
--------------
There seem to be two or three types of memorials proposed:
1. The actual "memorial" in the true sense of the term (meaning a depiction of people, fire fighters, police, citizens, etc.)
2. The monument that associates itself with the form of the towers: paired, vertical or actual office towers (this can verge on the purely formal, not much content, and I'm not a fan of burying the thing in the regular monotony of corporate America, and "innovative" towers are really hard to come by)
3. The monument that has no specific form related to the former towers (could lose its visceral connection to the event, possibly needing a kind of "cheat sheet" to explain itself, possibly not contextual to the scale of the site, city or time)
[quote]Have two specially made gigantic flood lights stationed "pointing up" from the grounds as a memorial and a permanent symbol of the remaining "Spirit" of the american peoples UnWillingness to back down and "give in" to the attack.<hr></blockquote>
Already gonna happen.
Unless plans have changed, the image of two ghostly towers will be projected up from the memorial into the night sky.
I 100% guarantee the flood lights will not happen. The enviro-nicks are fighting any type of flood lights in every city based on the "fact" that it confuses migratory birds.
The "names on wall" thing is passé. It seems that every memorial these days is "names on ______". Is this the "prefect" memorial? Should we just repeat it forever?
Here?s an idea. I think the towers should be rebuilt. Let some architect do whatever they want. Have trust in them they are not dumb. Just don't get SOM. Now the towers were kitty corner to one another. Why not build the new ones on the other corners. That way it?s like having the same arrangement but not having to build on the same place. It's not quite replacing them but still rebuilds. Where the towers were you put some kind of memorial. I would like to see something simple. You have to remember that people live and work down there. So you can't just rope off the place and make it into a memorial. It has to exist in a living city.
The Maya Lin list of names motif may not be appropriate for all things, but it is definitely appropriate here. There's no questioning who the victims were. Arguably you can question how influential certain Civil Rights leaders were.
The Vietnam Veteran's Memorial is an appropriate example, and I think the WTC Memorial would be as well.
And regarding the suicide-hijackers. They were victims in a sense too. They were victims of convoluted dogma. Of course they were also mass-murderers...In the end, I think it's a matter of expectancy. If you were expecting to die...expecting to kill that day, you do not deserve to be remembered in such a memorial. If somebody wants to erect his own private memorial to those people, he is free to do so.
It should be something that evokes those sections of what was still standing after the towers came down.
The towers when they were standing were not so much a beacon but a point of reference. And now, in a strange way they still are. The memorial should remind us of what was lost. The names perhaps could be etched in the bottom of a reflecting pool - just out of our reach like they were in the last hours of their lives.
Comments
But you see eagles and so forth and the words inscribed and it's come to be taken as a certain "look".
To me, anyway.
I don't know.
Perhaps that big bronze 20' middle finger doesn't seem like such a bad idea now...hmmm.
As far as the buildings, to be honest, I wish they would build new 100 story towers that look similar to the WTC style-wise...only build three of them and not two or one - simply as a way of saying "fu*k off" to the backwards ass scumbags who fault this country for its wealth and success and want to tear down our symbols as much as anything else.
In addition to a tasteful and somber memorial, the buildings ought to be the "kiss our collective ass" part. And that part should definitely be there IMO.
[ 12-21-2001: Message edited by: Moogs ? ]</p>
Have two specially made gigantic flood lights stationed "pointing up" from the grounds as a memorial and a permanent symbol of the remaining "Spirit" of the american peoples UnWillingness to back down and "give in" to the attack.
At night two huge beams of light would stand high into the sky... reminding everyone of why we fight this battle and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again...
E PLURIBUS UNIX
-----------------------------
As to a memorial, I think it should be something tasteful and simple. I'll make you one wager, though -- someone, or some group, is going to lobby to have the suicide terrorists listed along side the civilians, firemen, an policemen killed in the attacks.
One thing not to do: ignore what happened. I have a real problem with the schemes that try to act like nothing ever happened, as some sort of "ultimate defiance."
OK, let's expand a bit: I do not like the idea of more-of-the-same becuase, like it not, for better or worse, America changed that day. Like Guiliani said, there was not only terrible tragedy, but incredible heroism. To ignore the vent by covering it would be to ignore those great people. As another pair of architects said, "don't erase the erasure."
I wouldn't say that a Vietnam memorial-style piece is passé, just that it's not unique to the circumstances. While Maya Lin's work and her Civil Rights Memorial are incredibly powerful, they are becoming "commodities" as everyone wants to make the next big minimal statement, diffusing the impact of the originals. That's not to say I'm for some neo-neo-Classical memorial either. Let the idea determine the aesthetic.
My first murky thoughts about it is to build a kind of anti-memorial. The original "anti-memorial" was erected to mourn the event of WWI. it was a column set in a deep bed of sand. As people walked and stirred over the sand, the sand under the column shifted, and the column slowly sank and eventually disappeared into the sand bed years later (ideally it was supposed to take as long as the war).
I think about the beacon that the towers were (though frankly they weren't so good on the sky line) and the idea of the towers as a symbol of power. I think about how the towers were over-scaled, actually scale-less. I think about how scale-less the event was - immesurable.
One one hand we want to mourn our loss. On the other we want to celebrate our strength. I thought about the idea of a deep square hole in the earth -- a tower in a negative. It could symbolize what we have lost, what the place was reduced to, a well of souls, the abyss of our sorrow. But I wonder of something to symbolize life like water would enter the memorial. I thought about a tower of water, life, hope, fortune.
Maybe the spirit of heroism could change the source of mourning, like how rocks erode under water. Not erase it, just change it, transform it into the effect of our spirit as the rest of the site grows again instead of leaving it as the source of our mourning.
Maybe the tower of water could sit next to the anti-tower, and the water could change the profile of the empty well next to it as it falls and runs off into the it.
On second thought, the water could spring directly out of the well (I was thinking twin-monuments there), which would make more sense.
But this only took 20 minutes. Better ideas would come with more thought and time, and with more talented minds.
--------------
There seem to be two or three types of memorials proposed:
1. The actual "memorial" in the true sense of the term (meaning a depiction of people, fire fighters, police, citizens, etc.)
2. The monument that associates itself with the form of the towers: paired, vertical or actual office towers (this can verge on the purely formal, not much content, and I'm not a fan of burying the thing in the regular monotony of corporate America, and "innovative" towers are really hard to come by)
3. The monument that has no specific form related to the former towers (could lose its visceral connection to the event, possibly needing a kind of "cheat sheet" to explain itself, possibly not contextual to the scale of the site, city or time)
[ 12-22-2001: Message edited by: BuonRotto ]
[ 12-22-2001: Message edited by: BuonRotto ]
[ 12-22-2001: Message edited by: BuonRotto ]</p>
Already gonna happen.
Unless plans have changed, the image of two ghostly towers will be projected up from the memorial into the night sky.
[ 12-22-2001: Message edited by: DoctorGonzo ]</p>
The "names on wall" thing is passé. It seems that every memorial these days is "names on ______". Is this the "prefect" memorial? Should we just repeat it forever?
Here?s an idea. I think the towers should be rebuilt. Let some architect do whatever they want. Have trust in them they are not dumb. Just don't get SOM. Now the towers were kitty corner to one another. Why not build the new ones on the other corners. That way it?s like having the same arrangement but not having to build on the same place. It's not quite replacing them but still rebuilds. Where the towers were you put some kind of memorial. I would like to see something simple. You have to remember that people live and work down there. So you can't just rope off the place and make it into a memorial. It has to exist in a living city.
The Vietnam Veteran's Memorial is an appropriate example, and I think the WTC Memorial would be as well.
And regarding the suicide-hijackers. They were victims in a sense too. They were victims of convoluted dogma. Of course they were also mass-murderers...In the end, I think it's a matter of expectancy. If you were expecting to die...expecting to kill that day, you do not deserve to be remembered in such a memorial. If somebody wants to erect his own private memorial to those people, he is free to do so.
The towers when they were standing were not so much a beacon but a point of reference. And now, in a strange way they still are. The memorial should remind us of what was lost. The names perhaps could be etched in the bottom of a reflecting pool - just out of our reach like they were in the last hours of their lives.