<strong>OK, so who won, the ghosts of WTC or the hanging gardens of babylon?</strong><hr></blockquote>
The hanging gardens of Babylon. That's what I thought of when I saw the model. Really, you get both in the Libeskind theme, only the ghost is in the ground.
I really can't express how cool it is in words... it's viscerally cool.
provided that the actual buildings taht go in are true to the plan, it will be stunning. the 'gardens of the world' will be a wonder of the modern world, for sure.
I can't say that I'm a big fan of the chosen design. Having been a frequent visitor to the NYC and the WTC when I lived on the east coast, I have a pretty good idea of what the skyline looks (or looked) like, and I don't think that this new design will fit well. I know the area of lower Manhattan well, and I can tell you that it is has plenty of beautiful, old buildings. This new creation, looking like something out of a sci fi film, just doesn't seem like it belongs amongst the older styles. It's really a matter of personal opinion, and I would prefer a more classic look, like the Peterson/Littenberg design. To quote Eugene, I would have to agree that:
"The Libeskind looks like an office park chopped up at various angles with a meaningless spire in the mix."
Oh well... Enough ranting. I'm sure the whole area will grow on me once it is fully constructed.
I really can't express how cool it is in words... it's viscerally cool.</strong><hr></blockquote>
The THINK team and Libeskind had the best models, even better than Foster's, which is really saying something. The THINK team's model pretty much sold everyone by its sex appeal alone. I mean, it looked gorgeous! That was the big difference.
Some of us are trying to convince the rest of our firm to build more models for our clients -- it's much easier to wrap your brain around this stuff when it's in actual 3D, not just some 2D view of a 3D world.
The high-res pictures on his site give some idea...
the museum / entry to memorial area is very reminiscient of the pyramide du louvre, just less stately and formal.
i think that the edgy design adequately captures the chaos of the destruction, but translates it into beauty for the future... if that makes sense?
above all, i'm happy THINK's design lost. it was overwhelmingly inefficient in use of space, and offered startlingly little direction in actual building shapes, it was more of a land use plan than anything else...
the whole 'monstrous 10 story tall park for 10 blocks' was wierd, as well. a bit too much.
the other thing detracting from theirs, imo, was the canopy hanging 2/3 of the way up.. which looked startlingly like a plane slicing through the lattice towers in their renderings <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
I'm happy to see that the original story at the top of this thread had it wrong about those big, empty, boxy latices being selected. I'm not sure I'm exactly in love with the Libeskind plan, but I like it much, much better than Think.
All the web sites I've seen about Libeskind talk about the 1776 ft. spire (symbolic of July 4, 1776, I take it?), but I haven't encountered much detail about the other buildings. How tall are they? In the pictures I've seen, they look like giant pieces of solid crystal more than real buildings.
Is that the intended real-life effect, or just an artifact of some graphical emphasis that's short on surface detail and long on making the proposed building stand out clearly, in a schematic way, from existing buildings?
Eugene & Co., I also like the Peterson/Littenberg scheme. I met them back in college, and their background in architecture is very similar to mine, so I was hapy to see their approach among the other more "avante-garde" designs. Their plan for the entire area was really very good, and I liked their idea for the memorial amphitheater and walled garden. It was the actual design of the towers that cost them. They were placed well, but they tried a little too hard to recreate Rockefeller center, and the two tall twin towers weren't designed to a level that fit the attention they gave them in the display. If they stayed away from trying to showcase the towers so much, they might have fared better.
I think that their efforts into the master plan drawing (a lot of people had a hard time discerning it), while appropriate, was less effective than the schemes that emphasized models to explain their ideas.
Other architects hated the scheme, but really the Libeskind and Peterson/Littenberg ones were the most thoughtful to the city and the streetscape. The best proposals were the ones that took it upon themselves to deal with the memorial to at least some extent.
--------
On the THINK team design: the competition entry was sort of like Jorn Utzon's entry for the Sydney Opera House. The eye-catching "hook" of that piece was the shell/sail-like roofs, but they didn't serve any particular role except for a symbolic one. That's not necessarily bad, but then you have to ask what happened to the "meat" of the program, the opera house functions? They are packed into the plinth that the roofs sit on, a six story plinth, mind you. Again, that's not a bad thing, it's just something that became an issue later when they had to pack everything into it and place the roofs on top.
The THINK proposal had those latticework towers, a symbolic gesture for the mostpart. So what happened to the rest of the program? They did meet the various commerical and private program requirements, and they did it by packing the north, south and east sides of the site with office towers. The towers were nondescript so they wouldn't distract fomr the memorial towers, and they were roughtly the height of the other buildings on that part of Manhattan. But the really critical aspect of the scheme, its biggest potential strength and weakness, was that backdrop or canvas for the main towers that housed the vast majority of the progam.
<strong>OK, so who won, the ghosts of WTC or the hanging gardens of babylon?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Exactly, the one reaction to the first was, "Is that a plane flying through them?" And the second looks like an oversized wreath...pathetic. So UN-NYC and out of place completely with the NYC skyline. Both would look great probably in L.A. or Miami.
I like the other because of it's familiarity to the Manhattan skyline and it's subtlety. What it lacks in size it strength is in its beauty and expanse (you did see the park extending into Manhattan?) with Let's get back to work. Let's move on and begin to rebuild a place where we can be productive and enjoy life. We don't need a flashy plant holder. We need to express our memories with a future of rebirth and beauty. The others just seem too damn blatant.
Ok. getting sleepy. Maybe when I wake up it'll all be a dream...(-__-)
<strong>I think that their efforts into the master plan drawing (a lot of people had a hard time discerning it), while appropriate, was less effective than the schemes that emphasized models to explain their ideas.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Being a smaller firm...did they even build models? I know those models can cost millions of dollars. I would believe that a full model of their plans would be pretty expensive. That's too bad. I just don't think we need to believe that big modern and overwhelming is better for this...Zzzzz...
Actually, the spiralling towers of the Libeskind scheme do fit well with the lower Manhattan "pyramid" of highrises. Before the Trade Towers went up, the NY Life and Woolworth buildings were the pinnacles of the financial district. The Libeskind scheme rises towards those buildings, especially the Woolworth building (they share a sort of gothic top - spires, points and stuff) and culminates in its own pinnacle. The lower portion of buildings to the South are about as tall as the World Financial Center buildings, which were designed as a sort of apologia to the wall of the World Trade Towers that broke from this pattern in the skyline. That's why the Peterson/Litenberg scheme pulle dtheir twin towers inboard so to speak, to pull the weight of the skyline back to the other side of Greenwich St.
<strong>Being a smaller firm...did they even build models? I know those models can cost millions of dollars. I would believe that a full model of their plans would be pretty expensive. That's too bad. I just don't think we need to believe that big modern and overwhelming is better for this...Zzzzz...</strong><hr></blockquote>
They did have a model made of carboard, foam and paper. It was a good model really, but it didn't have the sex appeal of the others (no uplighting or fibre optics).
While getting a laser cutter and a prototype molding machine is very expensive, they can pay for themselves fairly quickly. All the firms did their models in-house, but like you said, while you don't have to be the size of Norman Foster's studio, you do need a critical mass of work to make that stuff worthwhile. Besdies, the Peterson/Littenberg studio in Manhattan probably can't fit or bear the weight of that kind of equipment!
(Geez, can you tell that I'm working late and excited about this?: ) )
maybe this is too personal a reaction to this design but until i thought of it - nothing connected me to this design. it's an observation i've heard no one else assert.
as i stood and watched the second tower fall - the only thing left standing in it's place - for just a moment was a single spire. it stood there motionless for a moment as the building had lain it bare and then just as if someone reached into my chest and clutched mt heart - in seeming slow motion it began to slip down and fall into the rising clouds of thick.
it all took place in a mere few seconds but it seemed suspended in time . i don't know why the spire gripped me the way it did especially after watching the bulk of both buildings explode into dust immediately before but it did.
i wanted to reach out and grab that needle-like ruin of a church spire and keep it from falling even if just for a second longer .
and maybe that's why i wanted the resurrected cage of towers to rise in their place to give me back something , repair what was lost and stolen from a skyline i watched and was warmed by my entire life.
my safety was stolen that day and other things died. the mention of which i know as selfish in light of the the obvious and real loss of life.
that spire conects me to that day but it was personal, it was mine and now it will be there all the time. you can't even go stand on it's top and believe things.
i wanted to play in a park up in the sky atop a 100 story tall artwork that rose in celebration of the human spirit. a playground where all could visit and see for miles around and speak of things meaningful and good. the view we saw as cildren on the observation deck or on dates and meetings with friends at the greatest bar in the world i want to share that view with others still.
perhaps i need to let go. and maybe visual reminder of two towers there would really be living in the past and i'm still going through loss in stages. the view i saw from the towers peaks inspired and emboldened. i think we can live with strong true statments. i think there is a place for them.
Comments
I don't know whether it will be good interesting or bad interesting.
Barto
<strong>I think the NYC skyline will look very interesting after these are built.
I don't know whether it will be good interesting or bad interesting.</strong><hr></blockquote>
This gives you some idea as well as some comparative iconography:
<a href="http://www.renewnyc.com/images/plan_des_images/firmd_sig1.jpg"; target="_blank">Skyline</a>
These two designs are mileposts on the road to the end of Western Civilization. Disgusting.
Aries 1B
<strong>OK, so who won, the ghosts of WTC or the hanging gardens of babylon?</strong><hr></blockquote>
The hanging gardens of Babylon. That's what I thought of when I saw the model. Really, you get both in the Libeskind theme, only the ghost is in the ground.
[ 02-26-2003: Message edited by: BuonRotto ]</p>
You're confusing people my man.
thank god, it's clearly the graceful of the two.
<a href="http://www.msnbc.com/news/877972.asp?0cv=CB10&cp1=1"; target="_blank">http://www.msnbc.com/news/877972.asp?0cv=CB10&cp1=1</a>;
[ 02-26-2003: Message edited by: Jonathan ]</p>
<a href="http://www.daniel-libeskind.com/press/index.html"; target="_blank">http://www.daniel-libeskind.com/press/index.html</a>;
I really can't express how cool it is in words... it's viscerally cool.
provided that the actual buildings taht go in are true to the plan, it will be stunning. the 'gardens of the world' will be a wonder of the modern world, for sure.
<insert vague anti-americanish babylonian comparison here>
"The Libeskind looks like an office park chopped up at various angles with a meaningless spire in the mix."
Oh well... Enough ranting. I'm sure the whole area will grow on me once it is fully constructed.
<strong>I saw the physical mockup of this design.
I really can't express how cool it is in words... it's viscerally cool.</strong><hr></blockquote>
The THINK team and Libeskind had the best models, even better than Foster's, which is really saying something. The THINK team's model pretty much sold everyone by its sex appeal alone. I mean, it looked gorgeous! That was the big difference.
Some of us are trying to convince the rest of our firm to build more models for our clients -- it's much easier to wrap your brain around this stuff when it's in actual 3D, not just some 2D view of a 3D world.
The high-res pictures on his site give some idea...
the museum / entry to memorial area is very reminiscient of the pyramide du louvre, just less stately and formal.
i think that the edgy design adequately captures the chaos of the destruction, but translates it into beauty for the future... if that makes sense?
above all, i'm happy THINK's design lost. it was overwhelmingly inefficient in use of space, and offered startlingly little direction in actual building shapes, it was more of a land use plan than anything else...
the whole 'monstrous 10 story tall park for 10 blocks' was wierd, as well. a bit too much.
the other thing detracting from theirs, imo, was the canopy hanging 2/3 of the way up.. which looked startlingly like a plane slicing through the lattice towers in their renderings <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
All the web sites I've seen about Libeskind talk about the 1776 ft. spire (symbolic of July 4, 1776, I take it?), but I haven't encountered much detail about the other buildings. How tall are they? In the pictures I've seen, they look like giant pieces of solid crystal more than real buildings.
Is that the intended real-life effect, or just an artifact of some graphical emphasis that's short on surface detail and long on making the proposed building stand out clearly, in a schematic way, from existing buildings?
I think that their efforts into the master plan drawing (a lot of people had a hard time discerning it), while appropriate, was less effective than the schemes that emphasized models to explain their ideas.
Other architects hated the scheme, but really the Libeskind and Peterson/Littenberg ones were the most thoughtful to the city and the streetscape. The best proposals were the ones that took it upon themselves to deal with the memorial to at least some extent.
--------
On the THINK team design: the competition entry was sort of like Jorn Utzon's entry for the Sydney Opera House. The eye-catching "hook" of that piece was the shell/sail-like roofs, but they didn't serve any particular role except for a symbolic one. That's not necessarily bad, but then you have to ask what happened to the "meat" of the program, the opera house functions? They are packed into the plinth that the roofs sit on, a six story plinth, mind you. Again, that's not a bad thing, it's just something that became an issue later when they had to pack everything into it and place the roofs on top.
The THINK proposal had those latticework towers, a symbolic gesture for the mostpart. So what happened to the rest of the program? They did meet the various commerical and private program requirements, and they did it by packing the north, south and east sides of the site with office towers. The towers were nondescript so they wouldn't distract fomr the memorial towers, and they were roughtly the height of the other buildings on that part of Manhattan. But the really critical aspect of the scheme, its biggest potential strength and weakness, was that backdrop or canvas for the main towers that housed the vast majority of the progam.
<strong>OK, so who won, the ghosts of WTC or the hanging gardens of babylon?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Exactly, the one reaction to the first was, "Is that a plane flying through them?" And the second looks like an oversized wreath...pathetic. So UN-NYC and out of place completely with the NYC skyline. Both would look great probably in L.A. or Miami.
I like the other because of it's familiarity to the Manhattan skyline and it's subtlety. What it lacks in size it strength is in its beauty and expanse (you did see the park extending into Manhattan?) with Let's get back to work. Let's move on and begin to rebuild a place where we can be productive and enjoy life. We don't need a flashy plant holder. We need to express our memories with a future of rebirth and beauty. The others just seem too damn blatant.
Ok. getting sleepy. Maybe when I wake up it'll all be a dream...(-__-)
<strong>I think that their efforts into the master plan drawing (a lot of people had a hard time discerning it), while appropriate, was less effective than the schemes that emphasized models to explain their ideas.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Being a smaller firm...did they even build models? I know those models can cost millions of dollars. I would believe that a full model of their plans would be pretty expensive. That's too bad. I just don't think we need to believe that big modern and overwhelming is better for this...Zzzzz...
<strong>Being a smaller firm...did they even build models? I know those models can cost millions of dollars. I would believe that a full model of their plans would be pretty expensive. That's too bad. I just don't think we need to believe that big modern and overwhelming is better for this...Zzzzz...</strong><hr></blockquote>
They did have a model made of carboard, foam and paper. It was a good model really, but it didn't have the sex appeal of the others (no uplighting or fibre optics).
While getting a laser cutter and a prototype molding machine is very expensive, they can pay for themselves fairly quickly. All the firms did their models in-house, but like you said, while you don't have to be the size of Norman Foster's studio, you do need a critical mass of work to make that stuff worthwhile. Besdies, the Peterson/Littenberg studio in Manhattan probably can't fit or bear the weight of that kind of equipment!
(Geez, can you tell that I'm working late and excited about this?: ) )
as i stood and watched the second tower fall - the only thing left standing in it's place - for just a moment was a single spire. it stood there motionless for a moment as the building had lain it bare and then just as if someone reached into my chest and clutched mt heart - in seeming slow motion it began to slip down and fall into the rising clouds of thick.
it all took place in a mere few seconds but it seemed suspended in time . i don't know why the spire gripped me the way it did especially after watching the bulk of both buildings explode into dust immediately before but it did.
i wanted to reach out and grab that needle-like ruin of a church spire and keep it from falling even if just for a second longer .
and maybe that's why i wanted the resurrected cage of towers to rise in their place to give me back something , repair what was lost and stolen from a skyline i watched and was warmed by my entire life.
my safety was stolen that day and other things died. the mention of which i know as selfish in light of the the obvious and real loss of life.
that spire conects me to that day but it was personal, it was mine and now it will be there all the time. you can't even go stand on it's top and believe things.
i wanted to play in a park up in the sky atop a 100 story tall artwork that rose in celebration of the human spirit. a playground where all could visit and see for miles around and speak of things meaningful and good. the view we saw as cildren on the observation deck or on dates and meetings with friends at the greatest bar in the world i want to share that view with others still.
perhaps i need to let go. and maybe visual reminder of two towers there would really be living in the past and i'm still going through loss in stages. the view i saw from the towers peaks inspired and emboldened. i think we can live with strong true statments. i think there is a place for them.