find yourself a city to live in

I'm amazed, but I actually like the new design for the World Trade Center site. I strongly disliked the design that was chosen, and it's been tinkered with so much that I stopped paying attention. I figured I'd just catch up with it when they were finished playing with it.

Now the new design for "Freedom Tower" (excuse me while I gag) has been released, and lo and behold, it's an improvement.

Info on the design here, and the Times has a slide show and video. This is just the tower, of course, not the whole complex or the memorial.

I saw a headline the other day in one of the NYC tabloids: "Pataki Nixes Nutty Anti-American Art at Ground Zero". Nutty Anti-American Art? I guess someone suggested the US might be held accountable for something and isn't always 100% right. Arrest that man! (Begone foul spirit?)

The title of this post makes no sense, but we were watching Talking Heads concerts last night (Red Sox had a day game). Alternate title: "You may ask yourself, how do I work this?"

61 days. [Countdown moving to a more prominent location...]

Comments

  1. barefoot hiker30 June 2005 at 06:19

    George Pataki: "We're not going to let it turn into something... anti-freedom...

    They're not going to be allowed to express an unpopular sentiment... and they're the ones who are "anti-freedom", George?

    ReplyDelete
  2. laura k30 June 2005 at 06:36

    I think it's safe to assume the irony is lost on him.

    ReplyDelete
  3. allan30 June 2005 at 09:47

    Wait, you like the new design?!?

    The skyscraper will now be sitting on what the Times calls "an almost impermeable 200-foot concrete and steel pedestal" with hardly any windows.

    Close to 20 stories of pedestal before the actual building appears?

    It seems like they actually succeeded in coming up with something less hospitalable and more block-like and coldly impersonal that the original boxy towers.

    Re: Moron Pataki

    You have the right to free speech
    As long as you're not dumb enough to actually try it
    The Clash

    ReplyDelete
  4. laura k30 June 2005 at 09:58

    Yup, I like it. I found the first tower design too busy and lacking any overall theme - a jumble bunch of architectural parts.

    I like this design's simplicity. I like the torquing column (that was part of one of the good designs that didn't get chosen).

    The big pedestal will probably be lessened/shortened by the time it's built. That part's not great, but recall standing by the old towers. You never had any sense of what the building looked like.

    Buildings that tall never feel or look good close up. When you stand by the Empire State Building, you can't see or feel its beauty or soar. So I wouldn't worry about the pedestal.

    But it's definitely less boxy than the two cereal boxes were.

    ReplyDelete

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