2002-12-18 - 6:28 p.m.
WTC = World's Tallest Crimes (against beauty)
So the designs for the new World Trade Center came out today, and they are not pretty. Height trumps aesthetics, bigger is better, we are the champions. What ever happened to the idea to make the site a memorial park? Apparently it didn't survive the rush toward replacing gigantic featureless towers that overwhelm the skyline of Manhattan with even more gigantic featureless towers. Some of the ideas are even uglier than the original. I didn't think that was possible, but lo and behold ...
The Empire State Building is a much more preferable keynote skyscraper, don't you think? At least it incorporates design elements. Maybe its rounded, feminine softness at its top appeals to me, but it also looks smart, like the architect cared about what he was doing.
Three hours later
Okay, I had to step out to attend a hoity-toity fundraiser at the Nokonah, the home-base high-rise of Ann Richards and other wealthy folks. A Porsche was up for grabs. All it cost to get in was $100, and you had a chance to win. Well, my friend Lindsay did not win, but we drank wine for free anyway and I saw Christian, an actor-trainer-jack of all trades who currently plays a wine pourer at Austin's rich hipster bashes. When I talk to him it feels like the monkey in "BJ and the Bear" -- he's quite the Hollywood hunk type, and I look like I've never met a comb. But he's really nice and used to read Spy magazine, which my dad subscribed to (for my benefit, I think) until it shut down. Just another victim, too clever to sell.I'm a little tipsy tonight -- didn't break my two-beer quota (I never established a glass-of-wine quota) but the empty stomachhood provided an extra oomph. Anyways, we were talking about the World Trade Center, and how badly designed it was and will be if these architects have it their way. Now check this out ... this is Model #1.
"I'm ashamed to be a building, I'm beveled and pointless." This is simply ugly, and doesn't appear too stable, either. I predict it will fall down before Osama ever gets to it.
Our final choice:
Now somebody please tell me, what the hell is this? A massive tic-tac-toe board? This is the worst of all. How could the design lords even consider this? It's a travesty, to think of all the poor souls who died in the original, ugly towers, and then to think their memories are going to be consecrated with a grid game. Shameless.
Why can't people just admit that the original towers were hideous? The buildings didn't die, the people did. We should be mindful when discussing the people, but the buildings were just materials, and we can make fun of them as much as we want. They should be replaced by more beautiful structures. Think about how beautiful are buildings in Paris (if you're lucky enough ever to have been) or Prague or even Washington, D.C. -- it's the minute details, the nuances that make you stop and say to yourself, "oh, how wonderful, I bet somebody spent hours carving that." That's glorious, not "I bet a ton of machines threw this baby together, and though it's an ogre, it sure is big."
New York City doesn't need another "skycrapper," as this Italian guy I once met called them. It needs a place where people can go and start contemplating the America of the future, the one we can see from a distance (kick on the Bette Midler!): The America that thinks and feels independently (not unilaterally), values real creativity, and rewards it with attention and praise and loads of dollars and small footnotes in history books (okay, so maybe this should change a bit). You know it exists, I know it exists. America needs unadulterated, free, liberated public space so that its citizens can live together and communicate. This is not an original thought, but it's worthy of reiteration.
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Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse. � Lily Tomlin |
