Wednesday, July 17, 2002

I'm sooo disappointed by the proposals for building on site of the World Trade Center. Beyond the fact that Beyer Blinder Belle (aka Blah Blah Blah) is not known for their daring... come on! Memorial Plaza, Memorial Park, Memorial Square, Memorial Triangle, Memorial Garden and Memorial Promenade. Spam and eggs, eggs and spam, spam and ham, spam and eggs and spam. What about the Memorial Elipse? The Memorial Rhombus? The Memorial Hollow? The Memorial Meadow. It's sort of answering the question by not answering the question to focus on the shape (the shape!) that the memorial portion of the site will take. What about the buildings? What will they look like? Residential? Commercial? Office space? A re-interpretation of the Towers? Hasn't everything been done that can be done with the International Style? And what form will the memorial take? Any ideas being tossed around? I mean, geez! The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation can basically do whatever they damn well please down there. Whatever they do, they're going to piss off some constituency (like the 50% of Post readers that think that the Towers should be rebuilt exactly as they were). And, whatever they do will essentially be henceforth the signature for New York City. Be bold, I say. The (never to be built) plans that Richard Meier (who's a New Yorker for gosh sakes!) has for Midtown West from Madison Square Garden to the Javitz Center are breath-taking. So many exciting possibilities. I hope that it's meant to be a ploy, a distraction. Get us all fighting about the merits of the Memorial Triangle as opposed to those of the Memorial Promenade and meanwhile spring something stunning on the world.

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