April 2005 Archives
Freedom Tower update
Sometimes the wall between the news and opinion pages at US newspapers is mildly exasperating. Last Sunday, the opinion page of the City section of the New York Times ran an interesting editorial about the Ground Zero Freedom Tower, saying that it "is apparently being sent back to the drawing boards, after word came from security experts at the New York Police Department that they have problems with the building as planned."
That news didn't come from the Times, however, and it wasn't until today that the New York Post, and others, picked up the story. Still nothing from the news pages of the paper of record: maybe they feel they've been scooped by their own opinion pages, and therefore don't need to run the story. It's a pity, because the Times's WTC coverage, led by David Dunlap, is streets ahead of its bizarre editorialising.
The editorial board simply doesn't seem to understand the issues involved, which is why it's peculiar that they seem to have got their hands on the news before anybdy else. The editorial starts off by talking about "George Pataki's Freedom Tower", which is just weird. If any individual deserves the possessive here, it's Larry Silverstein; David Childs would be the obvious runner-up. George Pataki had the opportunity to take ownership of the building and its design, but abrogated it in favour of letting the duelling architects (Childs and Libeskind) squabble amongst themselves and eventually come up with a compromise design that both of them hate. Is it a "stunning creation", as the editorial board puts it? Not at all.
Of course, the design for the tower has changed substantially since I blogged it back in December 2003. The problem is that no one has a clue what the revised design looks like: the cobbled-together plan of 16 months ago remains the only thing that the developers and the LMDC have allowed the public to see. It's well over a year, now, since I said that basic elements such as the 1,776-foot height and the toothpick-like spire were almost certainly going to be jettisoned; nothing has been confirmed in the interim, although I'm sure that Silverstein and Childs will make full use of the NYPD's safety worries to get rid of any lingering traces of Libeskind.
The New York Times editorialist, however, doesn't even seem to have looked at the design from 2003. The editorial describes it as "a massive building, with too much extra office space - added to suit the developer", which is simply wrong. The too much extra office space, added to suit Silverstein, is not in the Freedom Tower so much as it is in all the undeveloped parcels of land dotted around the rest of the WTC site – parcels which are going to have to remain empty for the foreseeable future until Silverstein gets around to building his allotted 10 million square feet of space. The Freedom Tower itself has about 2.6 million square feet of office space, which is not unheard-of for New York skyscrapers, and which seems pretty reasonable considering that this is designed to be the tallest building in the world.
The design is also not "massive" in the hulking sense implied by the editorial. Yes, the footprint is reasonably large, as you'd expect from a very tall building. But it curves and tapers pretty gracefully, and I very much doubt that the NYPD's proposed changes are going to make it look "like a vertical bunker", in the words of the editorial. The Goldman Sachs building, at 85 Broad Street, looks like a vertical bunker; the Freedom Tower will not.
It's also worth asking where this story came from. Here's the New York Post:
One source cited frustration with the NYPD bringing up the security issue so late in the rebuilding process but said every effort would be made to ensure that the tower will be as safe and secure as possible.
And here's the New York Times:
Since the details about the Freedom Tower were first unveiled to the public in December 2003, that delay by the department is unreasonable.
Hm, do you suppose the same source – someone at SOM, perhaps – has been talking to the New York Post, and to the New York Times editorialist, but not to David Dunlap, 'cos Dunlap might know enough to call bullshit on him? My guess is that the delay has very little to do with NYPD foot-dragging, and much more to do with the fact that SOM has only recently seen fit to present detailed plans to the police. After all, the NYPD could hardly have judged security in the building simply on the basis of a large model unveiled in 2003 which didn't even show where the entrances and exits would be.
My guess is that SOM spent a very long time before finally providing their plans to the police, in the hope that the police would then feel forced by Pataki-imposed deadline to sign off on anything the architects wanted to do. When the police proved not quite as compliant as expected, SOM went to the (more compliant) press.
The one thing this story does tell us, however, is that there are, now, detailed Freedom Tower plans out there somewhere. We would probably be expecting to see them pretty soon, were it not for the fact that Childs & Co have been sent back to their proverbial drawing board. My guess is that we're only going to get a realistic idea of what the Freedom Tower is actually going to look like in 2006. And that when the final plans are released, the tower will bear about as much relation to Libeskind's original vision as the Time Warner Center does to the Jewish Museum in Berlin.
Posted by Felix at 18:56 EST | Comments (2)
Rhian's bath tour of the world
The airport hotel in Santiago had all mod cons, including an en-suite bathroom, with bath. I was very excited about this bath, but as I went to close the curtains at the window so I could waltz around naked between bath and bed (huge, double, to be occupied fully alone, about which I was also very excited), I spied a Swimming Pool outside. It was only 1am, a very reasonable time for a swim, considering how long I had gone without one, I thought, but the concierge clearly thought I was mad when I appeared in the lobby in bikini and sarong.
Oh, that first splash! Water all around me. And in a bikini, outside! I splashed around like a six-year-old. But the best bit was if I floated on my back and looked at the stars. Orion was there, smiling down on me, and I was happy to know that Halley wasn't so far away after all. (My favourite time is still star time, the place I can escape to when the world all gets a bit too ridiculous.)
The bath was good, but not up to expectations. No bubbles, and I had to hold my legs in the air in order to lie properly down. Far too short.
Expectations, another thing I've realised. The things I was most looking forward to: baths, mangoes, carrots, wine, etc etc, were all of their absolute finest in my imagination, and often first attempts did not live up to standard. But I persevere.
My second bath was in Buenos Aires. This was much better. Still too short, but in an old ceramic tub with cracked tiles, in an ancient hotel with a story to tell. I didn't realise, but I had missed history. Every year, a new Halley is created by a new layer of snow. I love that. But history... In Santiago I found myself drawn inside an ancient cathedral: dark, old, so many stories. A queue for confession with the smiling priest. If I spoke Spanish, I would have gone to him myself. Religion. Now there's something I hadn't experienced for a while. I left out of a different door to the one I entered, and for the next two hours walked west and north, right off the tourist map, when I had intended to go north and east, into the center of town.
The next day, I discovered markets. And then, overwhelmed by bustle, smells, colours and people, escaped to the massive park, with a mango. I am pleased to report that the mango lived up to expectations. (I find myself going out of my way to walk past flower stalls: the smell, downwind, so entrancing and novel. Especially if there are fresias on sale.)
My third bath was on the lush island of Waiheke in New Zealand. After a 14-hour plane journey, the chaos of commuting, and sensory overload of a hundred colours of green in the rainforest, I yearned to submerge myself into steamy oblivion. The water was brown and smelled of mud. I later discovered the only water source was from rain, and the tank was low. Oops. From then on, I reverted to Halley showers. The bath was good, though, a kid obviously lived in the house, so I felt happy splashing about, and the wonderful comforts of a real home seemed to surround and await me.
The next baths, if you can call them that, were in the sea, and I floated for many days in the water, with endless boundaries. The sea. Swimming in the sea. Salt. I have missed the sea.
I had my fourth bath of the year, in a motel in Dargaville, a town that lived up to every stereotype that the name suggests. Nothing to report, except the spa. With my toes touching one end, I could stretch out, under water, as far as my neck. What it lacked in history, it compensated a hundred times in size. And bubbles of air. Yes, at last, a bath up to my expectations.
I now write to you from Sydney. My friends left me in their house for the weekend while they go to a wedding and I get to be entartained by my brother. Their bath, though tiny, was the best yet. Porcelain, chipped, lemon verbena bubble bath, miaowing cat, cup of tea and book not far away. While Felix is hurrying with the rush to do nothing all day, a phenomenon most New Yorkers apparrantly struggle with for atleast a week, I still need a couple of hours to build up to the idea of leaving the front door. He amuses me with his entanglement of media contraptions and the constant demands that they place on him while he laughs when I speak the first thing that pops out of my brain, independant of tact, timing or relevance to anything. We make a good team... and it's wonderful to see him. Ultimately, the only thing I have really missed is the people who know me best and who I love the most.
Posted by Rhian at 21:01 EST | Comments (7)
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