Wel irk What Should Lower Manhattan Look Like? \Wo new towers. Maybe four, half the height. An opera house. New subway stations and an un- derground mall. Everyone agrees that first there must he a memorial to the victims —“soating, monumental, beautiful,” in the words of former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Oth cs, like Philadelphia-based architect Robert Venturi, think that remembrance of the terrorist attacks of ‘September 11 might be best expressed in the restrained esthetic of “doing nothing” at all In the months since the attacks, there has been no shortage of proposals for the 16-acre World Trade Center site, They have sprung up on Web sites, emerged at conferences hosted by universities and profes- sional societies, and been displayed on art-gallery walls. “Within a day” of the destruction, says: Venturi's partner, Denise Scott Brown, people were asking what should be done with the void. At the time, she says, the only appropriate response was to ask, “How can we help?” ‘Many in her profession still think it’s to0 soon to finalize any plan, advocating in stead an undefined period of “analysis and absorption,” as Venturi cals it. “You have to live with a situation to really understand the significance and the ramifications of the tragedy and be a part of it,” he says. Architects consider the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site It was this need to understand that motivated more than 50 architects to sketch their ideas—and inhibited several others from doing so—for the “New World Trade Center” exhibition this winter at Chelsea’s Max Protetch gallery. One of the show's participants, Hani Rashid, initially declined to submit a design, thinking the timing ‘was “too premature.” But then he decided to go ahead, fearing that a push for “quick development to get back Ieasable space” would result in “benign buildings” and there being “no dawn there down there.” I's an uneasiness that many architects—and New Yorkers in general—share. And despite the consensus that whatever rises to replace the twin towers must address the interests of victims’ family members, developers, government agencies, business E leaders, cultural institutions, and residents alike, the means of realiz dertaking remain unclear. ‘One thing is certain, however: architects will be at or near the center of the process of redesigning downtown, no matter which of these groups their clients be- Jong to, Taking this into account, ARTnews asked several prominent designers 10 share their thoughts on rebuilding Lower Manhattan. In short, we wanted to know jjust how it is that we get down there from here. —Jessica Dheere wg such an une "= ‘The late architect Samuel “Mockbee's pinup proposal fr the Max Protetch galley’ “A New World Trade Center” show. Frank Gehry “The only thing that made any sense 10 me was what Gin- lan said that a soaring pub- lic space that people from all over the work would want to come to should be erected. For mot triggered the Pantheon, the Hagia Sofia. though, such a beautiful soaring space were to be built, the memorial would be there de facto, and that doesn’t mean you can’t put development around it. But first they've got to address the emo- tional issue somehow. Hani Rashid ‘We need to think about what would be a 2ist- 124 It could be a big public space that would be nonde- rnominational, have no program, that would be—i it could be—as beautiful as one of those places, and people would want to come to sit and contemplate, pray in it... But don’t think that’s practical, or possible. I don’t think people would pay for it, but I ‘would take people there. That said, I don’t feel good about being in volved in it. I's a burial site. In the best of all worlds, one would say: stop it, wait a minute, we don’t need to build that space there right now. If, Arnit 2002/ARTNEWS century equivalent of architect Minoru Yamasaki’ vision. When his twin towers were on the drawing board, we were trying to land on the moon, These ‘were the aspirations of the human condition at that time. Those aspirations have changed and should be identified and incorporated into the new project. There is amazing potential to resituate New York City and the World Trade Center in terms of the new global economic vectors and trajectories, nd that has a lot to do with electronic media. The World Trade Center was in some ways becomingq q 7 ‘An idea for replacing the twin towers, proposed by Asymptote ‘Architecture partners Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture. anachronistic. These media are having an impact on the way that markets work, as in our trading-floor operations center at the New York Stock Exchange. We should consider how 10 create state-of-the-art technologies to allow world economics 10 ‘move with more lucidity and efficiency. But that won’t put the heart and soul back into the downtown core of Manhattan. Peo- ple have fo remember that the area was not really that vital be- fore the attacks. We need to create a magnet for market economies around the world. The proposals that range from quiet memorials to rebuilding four towers represent a very ‘small spectrum of the possibilities. Cesar Pelli f Twas never happy with the island that the whole site created. It would make me happy if the old streets were allowed J to cut through it and reweave. But Ihave 5 a repulsion to thinking about actual 4 shapes or forms. For a long time I #1 couldn't even think about my buildings, the adjacent World Fi- nancial Center towers. I could only think about the life lost. But after a while, I had a chance to see Manhattan again from the Jersey side, We flew over the East River fairly low, from Minneapolis to La Guardia. Before, in similar views, you saw the World Trade Center, and all the other buildings looked tiny. Now the other buildings, like the Woolworth Building, look Inuge and heroic. They are tall buildings again. And proud tall buildings again, And something similar has happened to the World Financial Center towers, But these are minor gains com- pared with a horrible loss. Denise Scott Brown The events of September 11 caused a huge disruption of patterns. But in the destruction, new pattems were initiated almost imme- diately. Rescue workers set up networks for survival around the site. They shared information on sources of food and locations of functioning washrooms. Soon a subcity had grown up within the ruined city. For those who remained in the area, patterns of daily life continued as best they could: a friend saw a fashionable lady walking a poodle through the rubble; stores retooled to serve a new market consisting of tourists and rescue workers. Right from the star, new urban images emerged. ‘One new pattem was heartrending: photocopied sheets of infor mation on lost loved ones, clustered at eye level along sidewalks where rescue workers and others could see them. The view of these on television reminded me of the small marble plaques, each commemorating person, found on old church walls. These most perishable of mementos were privately sponsored. How were they displayed and where were they located for maximum visibility? What pattem did they suggest? A final memorial should embody them. They are like footprints in time, There should be a garden of remembrance in all of this—small, as New York churches are, compared, ‘with New York skyscrapers. And civic, as New York public spaces are, compared with corporate atriums. ‘And intimate, tender and sorrowful, yet life-giving and, ‘upward-looking, Peter Eisenman I purposely didn’t go into the Max Protetch show. I ccouldn’t ask the questions that needed to be asked. Whatever ‘20e5 up has t0 be a public icon, whether it makes an impact from the water or the air or the ground. It has to be some sort of public acknowledgment. It can’t be another set of buildings that just blends in, Deborah Berke This is going to be a heavily wafficked place, maybe more than before. Ideally, ‘one wants the place to emerge in two ‘ways, as part of the mainstream building process and organically, in the same way that cities grow and change. If the two ‘occur simultaneously, it will make the re~ building of downtown more authentic, So often it’s the arts ‘community that provides impetus for redevelopment down the line, Arts representation downtown could take a variety of forms—galleries, artists’ housing, performance spaces. Rich, ‘complex places have events on a variety of scales, so if you have ‘an opera house, you might also want to have intimate spaces. too, Billie Tsien ‘The questions that are generally being asked seem to involve large-scale gestures: How are the buildings going to be replaced? ‘Where's the memorial garden going to g0? For me, the most in- teresting gestures that occur will be in the cracks and crevices ‘Those big gestures are going to happen, certainly. But I'm i terested in leftovers. When things are only seen as big gestures, they become very dul. It's the odd things that happen on the pe- riphery of the mainstream that give the Mavor of life to a place. ‘And that's what New York is all about : ‘Tod Williams/Billie Tsien & Associates’ sketch for the downtown site, ARTNews/Arai 2002 128