I woke up this morning desperate to go have a cup of cheap coffee and read the New York Times. I wanted to relish in the fact that I was not at work while everyone else was locked inside on this beautiful day. I start work on Monday, 911- a fact that elicits a small chuckle from within as it will indeed be a day of infamy to have to return from Lala land back to reality. However, in all seriousness, the acrid tang of 911 has essentially died down for me and has become, as it is for most NYers, a bit of a peristant unscratchable itch. It's over, and as a city who has suffered the consequences of it's federal government's political gaffs, it would be much more dignified and efficiant if the rest of the country would pay it's respects to the dead by voting for better legislators and commanders in chiefs, instead of making cheesy Nick Cage movies and holding ceremonies. So, on September 11th I mourn more for the loss of a system that is checked and balanced and for a statesmen with the class and diplomacy to represent us to the rest of the world. I mourn for a time that may have never existed where rationality and plurality was our defense against insipid evil. I mourn for my own ignorance. My ignorance of my ignorance! I did not know before how large a gap in knowledge I have as to the true nature of what the United States does in the rest of the world- both good and bad. Instead I, like so many others must be patronized in my travels by other people from other countries with their rudimentary explanations and descriptions of histories and theories that they can only assume that we Americans do not know. I must read foreign book reviews on Darwin's biography that discuss the ignomeny of Darwin in the American perspective because of the creationism debate. I must be called a Bushionian American pig by European punk rockers. (Don't worry we gave them theirs!) For we are not living in a Post Modern America here. We live in dangerous times. It is a reactionary world that politically can be as damaging as any other witch hunt or inquistion to souls of its people. But when I return to my country with her bad rep and her constant partison squables I still feel proud. I am just lucky that I come from New York. So it is with this large intro that I present to you a glistening Jetsonian picture of a post 911 New York:
At first sight of these ivory "Freedom" Towers I thought immediately of the clean spots on hardwood floors under pieces of furniture safe from the years of dilapidating dirt. Those spots are always a signifier of how dirty and worn the rest of the floor is- they are in fact eyesores. These laconic phalluses are taller than any building ever built in New York and they are the the brainchilds of three separate architects from London, New York and Tokyo.
Now I don't mean to sound like some Flag waving Randian objectivist who needs to harsh on whatever plan is erected simply because I am frustrated with the "man" but...this site is a graveyard for a certain element of humanity, architecture and most importantly New York history; therefore in lieu of this, shouldn't the structures reflect in their form, color and philosophy the nature of the people and structures that they are in effect epitaphing? These Freedom towers are a rebirth, but aren't they also a giant memorial- a living memorial. Ivory is the color of heaven, of cleanliness, of Purity- and I mean this in the most endearing way possible- that ain't NY! Also building a large conical column pointing up to the sky does indeed look to me like a grand spirit highway to the sky.
Secondly, why was it not a sure thing that all of the architects be New Yorkers? Especially ones working down in Tribeca. Isn't it time NYC really got back to some Grass roots? Isn't it time we take care of our own? After all Ohio and Pensyltucky are not really helping! Tokyo and London???????? I know I know- New York is an international city whose people reflect a global nationality not any one perspective. Well if this is true, than why are the buildings all designed in this clean fluid upward sweeping motion that lack any kind of diversity or flavor?
Here is a better description of the plans:
The designs presented this morning by the developer, Larry A. Silverstein,
together offered the most comprehensive picture to date of what the
finished complex might — just might — look like six years from now.
Lord Foster’s Tower 2, with a rooftop of four enormous diamonds steeply
inclined toward the memorial below, would be as high as the Empire
State Building. Tower 3 by Lord Rogers, framed boldly by an exoskeletal
framework of diagonal beams, would reach a pinnacle of 1,255 feet at
its corner antennas. Even the smallest and subtlest building among
them, Mr. Maki’s Tower 4, would be taller than the Citigroup Center in
midtown.
If these buildings form any kind of ensemble with the
Freedom Tower — Tower 1, by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill of New York
— , it would probably be a jazz quartet.
Apart from Tower 2, they are also a far cry from the quartz-like forms originally envisioned by Daniel Libeskind,
the official master planner of the trade center site. Though they
follow Mr. Libeskind’s dictum that the office towers step down in
height progressively from the Freedom Tower, the intended spiraling
effect may be lost on the casual viewer because the buildings do not
appear at first glance to be parts of a unified whole. Instead, it may
look like an instance of urban randomness.
Well Unified randomness- I'll give them that.
My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic
being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with
productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only
absolute.
— Ayn Rand, Appendix to Atlas Shrugged
Well either way, we shall make it our own and scruff it up in no time. But I dream of those old marble and stone giants that dwell all over Manhattan and Brooklyn. They are Gothic emblems of a grander New York with their gargoyled trellises and mythological Friezes on every story. They pay homage to the great European masters of the 18th century. Those buildings evoke the tough long toothed striking beauty that is my city- not this pansy ass ivory column bullshit- if you'll pardon my French.
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