December 18, 2003
Architecture Wars
Building a landmark is bliss at the inception and the conclusion, but don’t ask about the inbetween. Take for example the $274 million dollar Walt Disney Concert Hall, which is adulated now, however, it took Frank Gehry 16 years of disputing many aspects of his design, as there were many people who did not want it built. Then think of Maya Lin, who in the same way had to defend her vision for the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial. Now flash-forward to the present and think of the most publicized architectural commission in the world—The World Trade Center. It’s no surprise then that Daniel Libeskind is fighting his own share of wars with the LMDC and Larry Silverstein, the ninety-nine year leaseholder of the WTC. Who incidentally got 7.2 billion dollars in compensation from insurance companies having only leased three months prior to the attacks. Lucky. Damn lucky.
It took 139 days for LMDC to declare that David Childs of SOM (hired by lucky Larry) would be the leading designer of Libeskind’s main skyscraper. The 1,776 foot “Freedom Tower.” The master planner was to cooperate with David Childs, whose architectural language is very different than Libeskind’s. I will add here that architects have huge egos that usually hurt innocent bystanders, just image what it must feel like to have someone else in charge of your joy-and-pride element. It’s not a secret that the collaboration between both architects has been unhappy. Tomorrow, the dysfunctional tower will be unveiled.
On another note, the memorial finalists were announced on November 19th. 5,201 entries were received from 63 countries and 49 states. Almost all of the designs use light as their main element, which is something that we did consider, but didn’t do anything about as we thought it would be either too discotheque-ish and/or too soft, that is, it would not represent the gravity of what happened. I would venture to say that one or two of the final submittals fall into this category. But that’s probably because I’m a bit jealous that our proposal didn’t get chosen (click on the thumbnail to have a closer look). Heh-heh. We will be featured in a book and in the museum though, so that’s very cool. There are rumors that the jury is not very happy with the overall results, which is not the fault of the designer’s, as there exists the uniform opinion that the site is problematic, and there should have been a competition at the beginning of reconstruction, when changes to the site itself could have been done. It’s of course too late for that now, and though the jury may also complain that many of the finalists ignore Libeskind’s vision, they are going to pick a winner by the end of the year.