WTC Tower One - by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (formerly "Freedom Tower")

[JMGarcia]

Libeskind, Childs to Unite on Trade Center's Freedom Tower

July 16 (Bloomberg) -- Architects Daniel Libeskind and David Childs agreed to collaborate on the world's tallest building at New York's World Trade Center site, settling a dispute between leaseholder Larry Silverstein and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the property.

Childs, of Skidmore Owings & Merrill, will serve as design architect and project manager of the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower, and Studio Daniel Libeskind, which was named the Port Authority's master architect for the site, will be ``collaborating architect'' Kevin Rampe, executive director of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., announced after eight hours of talks that ended after midnight New York time.


Silverstein and Libeskind reach agreement on ``Freedom Tower''

By JENNIFER FRIEDLIN
Associated Press Writer

July 16, 2003, 2:20 AM EDT

NEW YORK -- Architect Daniel Libeskind and representatives of developer Larry Silverstein agreed early Wednesday to collaborate on a design for the 1,776-foot "Freedom Tower" planned for the World Trade Center site, officials said.

The collaboration gives architect David Childs, who has done extensive work with Silverstein, the lead role in developing the tower, which is to be the world's tallest.

It was unclear what effect the deal will have on Libeskind's design for the tower, which was part of a proposal for the site chosen over eight others. The agreement has yet to be signed, and no terms were disclosed.

Childs, a consulting partner for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, will serve as the design architect and project manager leading the team that will design the tower, officials said.

Libeskind will serve as a contributing architect for the concept and schematic design of the tower.

In a statement read by Lower Manhattan Development Corp. President Kevin Rampe outside the agency's offices, officials said the "Freedom Tower" would be designed in "a manner consistent with the Libeskind vision."

"I think it was a great meeting today," Rampe said. "We saw a tremendous amount of collaboration between Daniel Libeskind and David Childs."

The announcement followed a nearly eight-hour private meeting at the downtown offices of the LMDC, which was created after Sept. 11, 2001, to oversee the rebuilding process.

The meeting included representatives of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, as well as representatives of Silverstein, the trade center's leaseholder. Silverstein did not attend.

Libeskind, who had been present during the discussions, did not attend the announcement.

His wife and business partner, Nina Libeskind, reached by telephone, said the statement reflected what happened and declined to comment further, other than saying that the meeting was "extremely positive."

The agreement appeared to resolve at least some of the conflicts between Libeskind and Silverstein, who have clashed over Libeskind's vision for the site.

Libeskind's had envisioned an off-center spire at the top of the tower, while Silverstein said such a spire would increase construction costs. It was not clear whether that aspect of the tower's design would be altered as a result of the deal.

Libeskind's design for the trade center site also includes other office buildings surrounding the empty ground where the twin towers stood.

Wednesday's announcement did not touch upon any other aspects of the plan, though Silverstein has voiced concerns about the commercial viablilty of Libeskind's proposal.

Gov. George Pataki has indicated that he would like to see steel on the centerpiece tower erected by 2006.


Copyright © 2003, The Associated Press

[JMGarcia]

Perfect Complement to a Grand Design
By EDWARD WYATT
NY Times

Daniel Libeskind has already secured what has been called "the commission of the century." He has the plans, the contracts to carry them out and the backing of important patrons, from Gov. George E. Pataki on down.

And now, Mr. Libeskind has one more thing that could help him make his vision for the World Trade Center site a reality: an architect's license.

Last week, Mr. Libeskind passed the national architecture licensing exam, one of the requirements for being a registered, licensed architect in New York State. As a result, he can legally prepare blueprints for and oversee construction of anything from a kitchen renovation to a 1,776-foot tower.

"I'm a New Yorker, and I'm a New York architect," he said in an interview yesterday. "I started my architectural education here at Cooper Union, and now I've come full circle. That was very important, that I do everything possible to be properly accredited by all the authorities."

Though it might seem odd that the winner of the design competition for the site was not a licensed architect, people in the profession say it is fairly common for high-profile architects to be unlicensed.

"The world's great buildings are done by great designers, not by people with licenses," said Alexander Garvin, who was the vice president for planning, design and development at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation during the design competition. An adjunct professor at the Yale School of Architecture, Mr. Garvin is not licensed.

Neither was Minoru Yamasaki, who designed the original World Trade Center, including the twin towers. Mr. Yamasaki employed the architecture firm of Emery Roth & Sons to produce the development's detailed construction drawings.

The defenders of the licensing requirement include the authorities at the American Institute of Architects and the New York State Department of Education, which licenses more than 14,000 architects — as well as doctors, nurses, acupuncturists and shorthand reporters.

Mr. Libeskind qualified for his license based on his design and building experience overseas, where he holds several professional licenses. For his New York examination, he was required to present and discuss drawings and related materials for three completed buildings that he designed. He chose the Jewish Museum in Berlin; the Imperial War Museum in Manchester, England, and the Felix Nussbaum Museum in Osnabrück, Germany.

"What I brought to the exam were technical materials," he said. "They were not just pretty pictures of buildings. At our studio, we've done all the working drawings for our buildings ourselves. I'm a great believer in not farming out those responsibilities to another office."

[Fabb]

Libeskind's had envisioned an off-center spire at the top of the tower, while Silverstein said such a spire would increase construction costs. It was not clear whether that aspect of the tower's design would be altered as a result of the deal.

Nothing is clear, really.
About the spire, Silverstein is stating the obvious. Unless it's finally used as an antenna.

[Freedom Tower]

If it was used as an antenna wouldn't that be even better? Wouldn't they have to then make the spire thicker to hold the antenna, and taller to meet the 1776 foot mark?

[NYguy]

NY Post...

FINALLY! DEAL REACHED TO REBUILD GROUND ZERO

By WILLIAM NEUMAN

July 16, 2003 -- Officials early this morning hammered out a deal allowing design work to get under way on the 1,776-foot tall Freedom Tower planned for Ground Zero.

After more than seven hours of exhausting negotiations, the agreement broke a deadlock between Ground Zero developer Larry Silverstein and the site's master planner, Daniel Libeskind.

Under the accord, Silverstein's architect, David Childs, will become the "design architect and project manager" for the world's tallest building.

Libeskind will have a more limited role as "collaborating architect during the concept and schematic design phases," said Lower Manhattan Development Corp. President Kevin Rampe in a brief 12:45 a.m. press conference.

He stressed that Libeskind will be "a full member of the project team," and called the deal a "historic collaboration."

Rampe refused to say who would have the final say if disagreements arise over the design or appearance of the tower - but a written statement makes it clear that Childs will be in charge and "leading the project team."

Typically, on a project of this size, the "design architect" and his client would make the final decisions. *

Libeskind and Silverstein have been at odds for weeks over who will control the building's design and how much it will look like the sketch presented in Libesknid's site plan - an angular building with a needle-like, 1,776-foot spire attached to one side.

In contrast, Childs has been working on drawings that place the skyscraping structure directly on top of the building, rather than beside it.

The two sides met at the LMDC's offices, adjacent to Ground Zero, with officials from the LMDC and the Port Authority brokering the compromise.

Much of the negotiating took place directly between Libeskind and Childs, a partner in Skidmore Owings & Merrill. Silverstein did not attend.

Both sides appeared to give a little and gain a little. Libeskind was given a place on the design team, although he gets no guarantee the building will look like the one he envisioned. Silverstein, who will pay for the tower with insurance proceeds, allows Libeskind to take part, but retains apparent control for his own architect.

"This collaboration will facilitate the development of the Freedom Tower in a manner consistent with the Libeskind vision," the LMDC statement said.

Childs has designed several skyscrapers, but Libeskind has no experience with tall buildings.

[NYguy]

Quote: from Fabb on 7:27 am on July 16, 2003
Libeskind's had envisioned an off-center spire at the top of the tower, while Silverstein said such a spire would increase construction costs. It was not clear whether that aspect of the tower's design would be altered as a result of the deal.

Nothing is clear, really.
About the spire, Silverstein is stating the obvious. Unless it's finally used as an antenna.


Silverstein clearly makes sense in this case. *There has already been a deal signed to place the broadcasters back at the top of the WTC, so there will be broadcast antennas.

But as far as the tower goes, it wasn't really necessary for the broadcast tower to extend to ground level - especially if it would block the views of the office workers on the west side of the office building.

I fully expected and still expect a design that will only feature the open space at the top.

[NoyokA]

In contrast, Childs has been working on drawings that place the skyscraping structure directly on top of the building, rather than beside it.

In reality this ploy, corporate and money-saving, could result in a greater skyline presence.

[Kris]

Who knows.

[NYatKNIGHT]

Has Childs done a tall building that isn't symmetrical?

[dbhstockton]

This means that the final product is not going to look much like Libeskind's vision. *Neither Childs nor SOM is not capable of Libeskind's unique kind of expressionism (I guess you could call it that). *I do have a feeling that the public will like what comes out of this process, though.

[Agglomeration]

If all this is true, then the trade center competition held last February was barely even worth it :angry:. I woudn't be surprised if sometime later Libeskind got sick of being shortchanged and decided to withdraw from the project altogether.

[Fabb]

Quote: from NYatKNIGHT on 11:52 am on July 16, 2003
Has Childs done a tall building that isn't symmetrical?


Not done yet, but 7WTC is not symmetrical.
But I understand what you mean though.
He'll just have to learn.

[Jasonik]

I'm glad SOM is doing the tower, they have so much experience.

At the risk of appearing cynical, ever since I heard Vinoly speak at MIT I've had the gut feeling that Libeskind is being used, as were all the entrants, to create a context for the memorial competition, period. *

I don't think the final development will stray too far from the basic land use parameters laid out by Libeskind, nor will the aesthetics depart radically from the jagged, shardlike forms.

Someone said (sorry) that the Libeskind design is basically a BBB scheme with 'architectural flavor crystals added.' *It has always been a plan and not a final draft.

New flavor = SOM Supreme

[TLOZ Link5]

That may be, but the public interpreted BBB's plans as an actual design, as opposed to just land-use proposals. *The Post has made it a personal mission to lambaste Libeskind's design for looking to Memorial Plaza-ish—at the expense of THINK's design, which would have killed the skyline with its giant chicken-wire tubes; not to mention the fact that all of the commercial space was crammed into a clutter of mid- to low-rise buildings at the eastern edge of the site. *Can anyone say, "hypocrisy"?

[Chris2005]

Hey, does this mean that construction will be able to begin sooner at the WTC site??

[JMGarcia]

Construction on the WTC site is already proceeding. No tower or other building (like the Transit Center) can really being until the below ground work is farther along.

[NYguy]

Newsday...

Libeskind, Childs Meet At WTC Site
Both Say They're Eager To Work On 'Freedom Tower'

Associated Press

Hours after agreeing to collaborate on a 1,776-foot "Freedom Tower," architects Daniel Libeskind and David Childs posed at the World Trade Center site Wednesday and said they were eager to get to work.

"It's going to be the best building in the world, and it's going to be a spectacular icon for New York and our re-emergence," said Childs, consulting partner of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

The collaboration announced earlier Wednesday gives Childs, who has done extensive work with trade center leaseholder Larry Silverstein, the lead role in developing the tower, which is to be the world's tallest.

It remains unclear what effect the deal will have on Libeskind's design for the tower, which was part of a proposal for the site chosen over eight others.

Asked whether he was concerned that his design would be compromised, Libeskind said, "No, absolutely not. It's going to be a collaboration, it's going to be something really dramatic, and it's going to restore the skyline of New York."

Officials said that Childs would serve as the design architect and project manager leading the team that will design the tower.

Libeskind will serve as a contributing architect for the concept and schematic design of the tower, they said.

Lower Manhattan Development Corp. President Kevin Rampe said in a statement that the Freedom Tower would be designed in "a manner consistent with the Libeskind vision." The announcement followed a nearly eight-hour private meeting Tuesday night at the downtown offices of the development corporation, which was created after Sept. 11, 2001, to oversee the rebuilding process.

Wednesday's announcement did not touch on any other aspects of the Libeskind plan, though Silverstein has voiced concerns about the commercial viability of the design.

Gov. George Pataki has indicated that he would like to see steel on the centerpiece tower erected by 2006.

Also on Wednesday, a spokeswoman for Libeskind confirmed a published report that he passed the national architecture licensing exam last week.

Libeskind holds several professional licenses overseas but took the exam to fulfill one of the requirements for becoming a registered, licensed architect in New York state.

http://www.nynewsday.com/media/photo/2003-07/8611976.jpg
Daniel Liebskind, center, jokes it up with Larry Silverstein, right, at a news conference at Ground Zero on Wednesday. Liebskind and Silverstein announced that they have come to an agreement regarding the rebuilding of the World Trade Center.

[Jasonik]

Officials said that Childs would serve as the design architect and project manager leading the team that will design the tower.

Libeskind will serve as a contributing architect for the concept and schematic design of the tower, they said.

Larry looks thrilled to be presiding over conception of the greatest skyscraper ever. *Lets hope Childs and Libeskind push for all they can get. *This is THE project to really do something stunning.

I'm excited already. **

[NoyokA]

Gosh!

Libeskind is a midget.

[Gulcrapek]

I was thinking the same thing. But the correct term is little person.

[Jasonik]

This is a cuter shot of the lil' guy.
http://www.renewnyc.org/images_WMS/grouppic2.jpg

[Agglomeration]

I can't really comment on that picture. But we need many more people in NY who think large and grand and perhaps futuristic, with an eye on enhancing the city's image and economy. Clearly the men in that picture aren't among them.

(Edited by Agglomeration at 12:35 am on July 17, 2003)

[NYguy]

NY Post...

A TOWER-ING TASK LIES AHEAD

By WILLIAM NEUMAN

July 17, 2003 -- The two world-class architects who shook hands yesterday over plans to design the world's tallest building at Ground Zero now have to face the hard part - figuring out a way to reconcile their clashing visions for the site's iconic tower.

"I think that what they can do is take elements from each design and use them," said Ed Hayes, a lawyer for Ground Zero master planner Daniel Libeskind.

"They're two very talented people who have agreed to collaborate. They'll find a solution."

After marathon negotiations that lasted from Tuesday night into the wee hours of yesterday morning, Libeskind agreed to work on the design of the 1,776-foot tall Freedom Tower, which is being led by David Childs, a prominent architect picked for the project by trade center developer Larry Silverstein.

The agreement was hailed yesterday with handshakes and hugs at Ground Zero, but the smiles glossed over the hard work to come and details of the fragile collaboration still must be worked out.

Childs and Libeskind are both considered world-class architects with big egos and little inclination to bend to the other's ideas.

That could be a problem, because each has come up with starkly different visions for the site's signature tower. *

Libeskind's sketches have been widely circulated in his plans for the site. The building is made up of two parts, an angular 70-story office tower with a narrow spire and antennae stuck on its side, rising to 1,776 feet tall.

Childs has kept his ideas under wraps, but he has worked on a concept in which the broadcast antennae and its base is perched directly atop the tower, not next to it.

Childs has argued that Libeskind's tower would be difficult to make structurally sound and would add to the already considerable cost of the tower.

The design deal brokered early yesterday calls for Childs, who has wide experience with skyscrapers, to be the lead designer. Libeskind, who has never built a tall building, is named as "collaborating architect."

The plan calls for Libeskind to send a group of architects from his firm to work directly under Childs, who is a partner in the powerhouse firm of Skidmore Owings & Merrill.

Other details remained vague and development officials hope to bring the two architects back together tomorrow to work out the specifics.

Childs has collaborated with other big name architects before, most notably Frank Gehry in a proposal for a New York Times tower. "There's no question that David's style and vocabulary are different from Daniel's," said a source. "But it's possible to speak in different architectural vocabularies and still work together."

http://www.nypost.com/photos/web07170305.jpg
DESIGNING MEN:
Ex- rivals David Childs (left) and Daniel Libeskind are all smiles at Ground Zero yesterday after their deal.

[Jasonik]

Architectural Record Editorial
August 2003
An Open Letter to David Childs and Daniel Libeskind
http://archrecord.construction.com/images/edit_Ivy.jpg
http://archrecord.construction.com/images/SIG_bobIvy.gif
By Robert A. Ivy, FAIA

Now you’ve done it—cemented a relationship to design the first tower on the former World Trade Center site. We saw the reluctant look in your eyes as you accepted the inevitable and embraced in the photo-op; we saw the wary resolve and the lingering questions of what lay ahead for you both. We could tell it in your smiles: A forced marriage is never an easy one.

You need to know that every architect in this country—all 100,000 of us—stand behind you. Most architects worldwide join in wishing you two, and the groups that you represent, well. However, in the same breath, we’re united in saying, “Don’t mess this up.”

You both will face skepticism, including cynicism from architects and the general public, that the dynamic forged in the original selection process has been subverted. Remember what has already happened: the hours of agonizing conceptual design, the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent by the LMDC and other teams of architects, the white-hot glare of the klieg lights focused on a choice. This choice. Despite the gaffes along the way, and the public repudiation of interim plans, Libeskind’s plan emerged relatively unscathed.

With good reason. Daniel Libeskind captured something beyond mere building in his drawings. His first plans, presented at the Winter Garden in December 2002, caught the moment with a vertiginous edge, presenting a gritty, angular view of today’s New York. Those first renderings, looming up from the Manhattan schist to asymmetrical high-rises, said something authentic about the people and the place with a dizzy energy. We recognized ourselves in those plans; you got it right.

Outside pressure and events have already affected the outcome. No one can deny that the PATH station had to return to service, but subsequent requirements have reduced the plaza’s depth from approximately 70 to 30 feet; the Gardens of the World, which originally seemed more conceptual than actual, evolved into an open tower. Further changes will be inevitable and may prove beneficial as the plans mature. However, any decisions that smack of expediency and threaten to compromise the force of the original must be rejected. That advice goes for the whole team, for your client, and for each of you individually.

David Childs, you have engaged complex programs before, though never with this critical attention. The stewardship of such a prime site, if managed properly, can gain you immeasurable international admiration, orchestrating the Libeskind scheme through the rough days ahead. Cave in too quickly, allowing this site to become a commodified real estate deal, or lend too heavy a hand to work that has already lodged in the public consciousness, and you will have failed in all our eyes. If you keep the Libeskind vision intact—not allowing the client or political wrangling to blunt the edges—you may find greatness within your grasp.

Daniel Libeskind, do not surrender or weaken the ideas you have already forged. When you have presented your intentions for New York and the WTC site, those present have risen to their feet and applauded. You’ve been forced into a compromise marriage; keep December’s triumph in mind as you proceed through the coming months.

Both of you will be tested. Your client, the developer Larry Silverstein, controls the purse strings. The Port Authority, a relentlessly pragmatic institution, owns the land. The Governor of the State of New York holds the political cards. But make no mistake. Ultimately, your client is the public, bound to this place and this process by an ethical trust that you both share. All of your fellow architects support you in your work as you begin the translation of a strong idea from two to three dimensions.

Here’s your charge from all of us: Make it sing.

[NoyokA]

I can only hope that they read this and take it to heart.

[NyC MaNiAc]

Yawn...It's getting late here, but I thought I should comment. A couple of minutes ago I just walked into my apartment after my 3 1/2 week trip through Australia and New Zealand. I've been up for more then 35 hours!

But, coming home, I was excited to see this. Something is happening. And that's good news. It's really starting to happen. I really want to see what this new design will look like! Good Luck to this project, and the bright future of Lower Manhattan.

Now, G' Night, Mates.

[Freedom Tower]

You know what's odd? The original WTC was designed by a man afraid of heights. The new one is designed by a short man. Both will be WTB when they're done.(If we get ours done before South Korea). I don't know, I just found that kinda funny.

[Kris]

August 31, 2003

THE NEW GROUND ZERO

The Invisible Architect

By JULIE V. IOVINE

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/08/31/arts/IOVI.184.1.jpg

DAVID M. CHILDS, who in conversation gives the impression of a gentlemanly, corporate architect, is remaking the face of New York. He is designing the key building at ground zero, the so-called Freedom Tower. But as a partner and the lead designer at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, one of the country's largest architectural concerns, Mr. Childs is also responsible for three more of the city's high-profile projects.

There's the nearly complete AOL Time Warner complex at Columbus Circle, which some call a new gateway to the West Side, and the universally applauded but temporarily stalled plan to recast the Beaux Arts main post office into a new and better Penn Station. He has also designed a new building for the New York Stock Exchange, a project that was postponed after Sept. 11. Other Manhattan buildings to Mr. Childs's credit include the Bertelsmann Tower in Times Square and Worldwide Plaza on Eighth Avenue.

Mr. Childs has also managed to be controversial, and handles even the nastiest insults with unassailable cheer. "Oh yes, I was a pariah for a time," he said brightly, as if describing a Halloween costume that really did the trick.

His supposed sin was to say, in the weeks after Sept. 11, that he was ready to rebuild at the World Trade Center site at a time when many others were still too stunned to ponder the future. He received so many hate messages he changed his cell phone number.

"But people came around," Mr. Childs said in an interview at his Wall Street office, overlooking a sun-soaked ground zero site already busy with new construction crews. Nor has he dawdled. His replacement for 7 World Trade Center — a 740-foot transparent glass box with a light-deflecting, wedged shape — is on its way up.

Mr. Childs is also proceeding with the design for the so-called Freedom Tower, sketched in by Daniel Libeskind, the master plan architect for rebuilding at ground zero. Mr. Libeskind proposed the location and height of the tower — at 1,776 symbolic feet, it will be the world's tallest tower. But Mr. Childs and his firm — as the architects for the developer Larry A. Silverstein, who has the lease to the site — will deliver the actual design.

Unlike Mr. Libeskind, whose egghead chic has inspired a New Yorker cartoon, Mr. Childs, even at 6-foot-3, can easily pass unrecognized.

Mr. Childs takes similar pride in what others might find disappointing in his work: a lack of a signature look. "At SOM, you don't know what my next building will look like," he said. "You know what a Richard Meier building will look like; there's a style. I'm more like Eero Saarinen, whom I revere. His buildings all look different." (Not everyone agrees with this characterization. Herbert Muschamp, the architecture critic of The New York Times, has written that "under the direction of David Childs, the firm has specialized in a denatured Art Deco style with vague pretensions to classical gravitas." )

Buildings as "egoistic big statements," as Mr. Childs put it, do not interest him. Making the fabric of the city is what excites him most: how streets thread their way through avenues and parks, how they open vistas to rivers or create a neighborhood. If his buildings sometimes tend to be over-polite, if not bland, that too is intentional, he says.

"David is a different model from the big-name architect with an agenda," said Wendy Joseph, president of the Architectural League of New York. "He's one of the few who sees himself in a broader way as a statesman and a leader."

The cordial Mr. Childs manages to maneuver through highly charged projects that ruin the reputations of other talented architects. He has made himself the darling of developers like Mr. Silverstein (which has made Mr. Childs a target of others less enamored of them), and while aesthetically conservative, remains close friends with avant-garde architects, including Peter Eisenman.

He has also managed to construct for himself a benign, neutral presence in the media. "People are terrified" of criticizing Mr. Childs, said Robert A. M. Stern, the dean of the Yale School of Architecture. "They don't want to hurt his feelings."

Mr. Childs came of age professionally in Washington. After graduating in 1967 from what was then called the Yale School of Art and Architecture, he joined Nathaniel Owings, a founder of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then urban affairs adviser in Richard Nixon's White House, in preparing a master plan for the Washington Mall and redesigning the capital's grand ceremonial boulevard, Pennsylvania Avenue.

President Ford then appointed Mr. Childs chairman of the National Capital Planning Commission. "He was the fair-haired boy of Nathaniel Owings," Mr. Stern said. "His career in savvy politics goes way back."

In 1984, Mr. Childs moved to New York City, charged with reviving Skidmore's flagging image. In its heyday in the 1960's and 70's, the gigantic firm (it still has 350 employees in Manhattan, plus branch offices in London, Washington, San Francisco and Chicago) was masterful at rendering American thumbs-up opportunism into slick, muscular corporate offices like the Sears Tower in Chicago. But by the 1980's, the firm was churning out boring buildings that were still very large, but also generic.

Mr. Childs came to Manhattan when the real action, design-wise, was in the architecture schools and in the minds of a few theoretical impresarios who preferred paper architecture to the messy reality of construction.

Soon after Mr. Childs arrived, Philip Johnson smoothed the young architect's way by inviting him out to lunch. He was also invited by Mr. Eisenman to the monthly dinner at the Century Association, a private club in Manhattan, attended by some of the leading lights in the profession, among them Richard Meier, Frank Gehry, Charles Gwathmey and Michael Graves. "I proposed to bring him into the Century circle for no reason other than he was a bright young guy we needed to have," Mr. Eisenman said. "Some in our crowd were not so happy that I did it, but they were wrong."

Mr. Childs had early success in the churning and competitive world of landing New York design commissions. He wasn't trying to reinvent the box or provoke any fierce reactions with his polite designs, and soon he was building the Worldwide Plaza office complex on Eighth Avenue.

Mr. Childs describes his favorite kind of work as the kind of commission many famous architects won't touch. "I like big complicated projects where you have to assemble teams, deal with the down-and-dirty contractors, the marketplace and the leasing agents with an imagination level only as high as what made money last time," he said, sounding for a moment like Gypsy Rose Lee on the subject of greasepaint. "For me, that's really building in the city."

Mr. Childs enjoys the fray. Transforming Columbus Circle couldn't have been a messier process, dragging on for some 20 years. Through it all Mr. Childs sat tight, weathering turnover in developers, mayors, tenants and even public taste in order to see his double-towered complex — a new home for a new AOL Time Warner — finally cast its huge shadow across the edge of Central Park.

It was as much chance as doggedness that led Mr. Childs to the World Trade Center. He met Mr. Silverstein, who leased the twin towers months before they were destroyed, by attending a 1984 series of lectures on real estate that the developer gave at New York University. They stayed in touch over the years, Mr. Childs said.

But it wasn't until August 2001, a month before the planes hit the towers, that Mr. Silverstein approached him about renovating his new properties. Mr. Childs and his team started working on a few preliminary ideas for improving the buildings' lobbies and the plaza. "I really disliked the whole complex," Mr. Childs said, describing the elevated platform on which the towers stood as "fortress-like and alienating."

It was, he said, "a place I went out of my way to avoid." He was scheduled to present his ideas to Mr. Silverstein on Sept. 12, in a conference room at the World Trade Center.

On the 11th, in fact, Skidmore had more than a dozen employees in the towers, mostly interior designers working with one of the brokerage houses. One Skidmore employee died.

On Sept. 13, Mr. Silverstein and Mr. Childs met to discuss what to do next, and how, Mr. Childs said, "to come back up again and recreate the skyline."

"David is the quintessential professional," Mr. Silverstein said in a phone interview. "He possesses the flexibility to adapt to different needs, agendas and pressures." By habit and personality, Mr. Silverstein said, Mr. Childs is "willing to subordinate himself to accomplish the goal."

Mr. Childs's choice of diplomacy over art has paid off for him and his firm, and he now has dozens of Manhattan buildings to his name. "David Childs is not about inventing a new architecture," said Ms. Joseph of the Architectural League. "People don't expect that from him. He's not taking a lot of chances, but he can make a building happen."

But what kind of building?

Mr. Childs's corporate equanimity leads some architects to worry that what gets built at the World Trade Center site won't live up to expectations.

Robert Ivy, editor in chief of Architectural Record, a professional magazine, is so concerned that he printed an open letter on the cover of the September issue, pleading with Mr. Childs and Mr. Silverstein to allow Mr. Libeskind to take the lead in the design.

"While I know David Childs is capable of making a competent building for the site, Daniel Libeskind's plan had a vertiginous, dizzying quality that captured something of New York and it would be a shame to lose that," Mr. Ivy said in a telephone interview.

Mr. Childs expects to show a final design to Gov. George E. Pataki in September.

Both Mr. Libeskind and Mr. Childs have their own kind of tenacity. Mr. Libeskind moved to Berlin for a decade to make sure that his design for the Jewish Museum there wouldn't be sidelined by politics. Mr. Childs has displayed his own staying power.

"I don't know that we know him fully," Mr. Ivy said. "Obviously there's a great deal of inner resolve to get so much built in this city. There's steel in there somewhere." *


Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

[Gulcrapek]

He has made himself the darling of developers like Mr. Silverstein (which has made Mr. Childs a target of others less enamored of them), and while aesthetically conservative, remains close friends with avant-garde architects, including Peter Eisenman.

No kidding.

He's a puppet, simply stated. A businessman. The article tries to make that a positive thing.

(Edited by Gulcrapek at 10:43 pm on Aug. 30, 2003)

[JMGarcia]

Mr. Childs expects to show a final design to Gov. George E. Pataki in September.

I'll be looking forward to it but I think that it will be simply impossible for it not to look a lot like what Libeskind has already proposed. If Childs stays true to form as someone who wants to actually get things built then he'll stick with the original design. Its too engrained in the public's conciousness to be drastically changed. I just hope he doesn't bland it down.

I am expecting a very dazzling rendering with lots of light effects that will be totally unrealistic though. I suspect most people will fall for the pretty picture and say its soooo much better.

[matt3303]

Let's just hope the Freedom Tower is better than AOL-TW

[Fabb]

I'm afraid it'll be a cross between AOL-TW and the Emirates Towers.

[Freedom Tower]

Well if he was the guy who designed the Bertlesman building I'm afraid some of the spire will be lattice work, like the spire on the Bertlesman building.

[Fabb]

It's a possibility.
Would that be bad ?

[JMGarcia]

Personally, I'd rather it be enclosed space.

[Fabb]

It would be more dignified.
But I don't dislike the functional aspect of antennas.

[NoyokA]

The Skywriter
An architect works quietly to design new WTC Tower
* * *
By Justin Davidson
STAFF WRITER

September 2, 2003

The architect David Childs is suspicious of inspiration.

"People think that architects just sit down with a blank piece of paper, sketch something out and that's it - you've got a design," said Childs, standing in his office and stooping over a plywood scale model of lower Manhattan. "But to do a sketch is dangerous. It's easy to fall in love with a sketch and it's very easy to convince a client to fall in love with your sketch."

With one hand, Childs lifted out a pair of twin towers and the miniature Manhattan skyline suddenly took on its post-Sept. 11, 2001 appearance. In the other hand he held a generic plastic cone as a stand-in for the 1,776 foot spire he is designing to replace the destroyed World Trade Center, dubbed the Freedom Tower. Tentatively, like a boy setting up a city of blocks, he lowered the cone into position, a few inches away from the office building he has already designed, 7 World Trade Center.

For now he is not permitting any public glimpses of his designs for the Freedom Tower. In preparation for an interview, he had stripped the conference room of drawings, leaving tape marks on the bare white walls. Like everyone else involved in the project, he would not talk publicly about the details, though at times he was obviously fighting the temptation to do so. A design, he said, would likely be made public sometime this month.

With all the outsized personalities associated with the task of rebuilding the World Trade Center - Daniel Libeskind, the voluble visionary; George Pataki, the soft-spoken potentate; Larry Silverstein, the hard-charging magnate brandishing his 99-year lease to the World Trade Center - Childs tends to drift out of the spotlight. A tall, quiet man with a gentle, slightly formal manner and a fuzzed pate that gives him the appearance of a large and very serious baby, Childs has had an enormous impact on New York and seems destined to have an even greater one.

Over the past 20 years as head of the New York office at the firm of Skidmore Owings and Merrill, he has designed a bouquet of Manhattan skyscrapers, including the Worldwide Plaza on Eighth Avenue at 48th Street, the Bertelsmann headquarters at Times Square and the Lexington Avenue tower that rises over the post office at Grand Central Station. Every day, thousands of people flow through his Terminal Four at JFK International Airport. And maybe one day a beleaguered New York City and New York State will scrape together the will and the money to execute his acclaimed redesign of Penn Station, relocated to the old Farley post office building. In the meantime, construction is nearing completion on Childs' AOL Time Warner Center, the $1.8 billion behemoth of Columbus Circle, reputedly the country's most expensive building.

And yet for a man who habitually works on such a colossal scale, he tends to be omitted from his profession's pantheon of celebrities. He is known for producing elegant workhorses, skyscrapers that will turn a profit while still honoring the skyline. But it's a reputation that regularly gets him dismissed as a "commercial architect," as if he were architecture's equivalent of a jingle writer. His selection as the lead designer of the Freedom Tower (Libeskind, who had shaped the site's master plan, had to settle for deputy status) was widely interpreted as the assertion of the developer Larry Silverstein's hardheaded business interest over Libeskind's eloquent philosophy. The Times of London summarized Childs' reputation as a corporate box-builder by asserting flatly: "The office towers that Mr. Childs will propose at Ground Zero may be unexciting, but they will most certainly attract tenants."

Childs' reaction to the "commercial" label is to repudiate it and be proud of it almost simultaneously. "Actually, 60 percent or more of my work has been on civic projects," he pointed out, citing his early work on the master plan for the redevelopment of the Mall in Washington, D.C. "But New York is about skyscrapers. When people think of New York, do they think of Grand Central Station, or do they think of the Chrysler Building? If you want to build a city, you have to get your hands dirty [with commercial projects]. It's messy, there are tremendous pressures and enormous egos at work, and sometimes you lose."

Childs wages these battles armed with great powers of persuasion: "taking a site that would have been developed as a C-plus building and convincing your developer to do it as an A-minus building," as he puts it. Specifically, he claims credit for cajoling Silverstein into reducing the size of 7 World Trade Center in order to run Greenwich Street through the site. "You can generally convince a developer to spend more money for a facade or something. What you can't do is take away his square footage - that's his golden goose," Childs said. "But we convinced Larry to lose 40,000 square feet on Number Seven. I thought that was important because Greenwich Street was once the edge of the Hudson River, so it's got historic and natural implications."

Once construction began, however, observers of downtown noticed that the Con Edison substation being erected as the tower's base was thrusting out 34 feet farther than its next door neighbor, creating a constricted Greenwich Street. That, Childs has said, couldn't be helped, given Silverstein's and Con Ed's constraints. Childs discusses these issues with a rueful smile that seems to say: You can't erect a skyscraper in New York City without setting off a geyser of complaints; we're willing to listen, but only up to a point.

In a world full of imperial egos, Childs comes across as almost self-effacing, a virtuoso of compromise and accommodation. After outlining the many reasons he believed the new World Trade Center should be situated several blocks south and east from the location Libeskind had chosen, he acknowledged that Gov. George Pataki had effectively quashed the idea. "And that's fine," he said brightly. "I agree with him."

Childs quietly grooves on the contradictory forces that go into building in New York City, the public battles over views, the demands of economics, the idiosyncratic skew of a street, the need to shoehorn battleship-sized machinery, acres of office space and sufficient quantities of light and air into a cramped Manhattan parcel.

These are, to him, far more potent agents in shaping the way a building looks than some abstract notion of style - which is why his projects have never been overweening displays of individual imagination. If you want a signature building, an instantly recognizable example of a great artist-architect's work, then you do not go to David Childs.

A decade ago, the critic Paul Goldberger opened his introduction to a special issue of the Japanese architecture and urbanism magazine A + U with the approving comment: "There is no such thing as a David Childs style." Asked if that statement was fair, Childs smiled noncommittally, but didn't object: "Some people have a pre-set form and then fit it into a museum or a train station or whatever. I believe that a building is best if it's particular to the site. Otherwise, if you have a form that you can just put anywhere, it's usually dead architecture."

[Freedom Tower]

Fabb, I would also, like JM, prefer an enclosed space because it will have more of an impact on the skyline. I personally don't find the spire of Bertlesman to look like part of the building. I just want the spire of the Freedom Tower to look like it is part of the building, not something thrown on top. I would prefer it to look like a usable part of the building, not an empty useless spire. Wouldn't you agree?

[NyC MaNiAc]

Hey, Freedom Tower, the truth will set you free...

Come on, New Yorkers, If it's a useless spire, let's be proud!

*Chants in the background*

"I love Useless Spires!"
"It's pointless, and it's cool!"
"I Heart Spires that are worthless!"
"New York City is Cool, but Spires with No Purpose are Better!"
"NyC, Home of the Spire, that actually does NOTHING!"

I Could make a fortune selling thesse as t-shirts are something. :)

[TLOZ Link5]

How about "Pointy and Pointless"?

[NyC MaNiAc]

TLOZ, your a genius...how could I have overlooked an other succesful t-shirt?

Pointy and Pointless-The New World Trade Center:
* * Construction Starting September 11th, 2004

Ah, I'm sure it will turn out good. Have hope.

[Freedom Tower]

Haha. You guys are hilarious. Trust me Maniac, I am definately hoping the new WTC will be good.

(Edited by Freedom Tower at 4:17 pm on Sep. 3, 2003)

[NyC MaNiAc]

As you should be Tower...

I think I just decided that all our moaning is doing no good. Seriously, I don't quite think they can just mess this up.

We'll end up with something good Freedom Tower-Trust me on that one, and keep up the optimistic feelings.

[Kris]

Libeskind, Childs Mesh Competing Visions at Trade Center Site

Sept. 11 (Bloomberg) -- The architect Daniel Libeskind knew he'd have to defend the Freedom Tower he'd proposed for the World Trade Center site when he arrived for a July meeting with development officials.

He didn't expect to be roped into a one-on-one debate with a competing architect, David Childs, hired by leaseholder Larry Silverstein to design the tower based on Libeskind's concept.

``I put them in a room,'' Kevin Rampe, head of the development agency, said in an interview. ``I told them the project was too important, not just to the city but to the country.'' He asked them to stay until they could work together.

Three hours later, the two announced they would cooperate, with Childs as chief architect. What they didn't say is that Childs objected to Libeskind's tower design. In a subsequent interview, Childs said he doubted it was structurally sound or cost-efficient and said he plans to change it.

On the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, meshing Libeskind's vision and Childs's design for the Freedom Tower is one of the many aesthetic, engineering, logistical, economic and political challenges for the biggest and most costly public or private development project in New York history.

Planners expect to spend at least $10 billion to remake Lower Manhattan under Libeskind's master plan for redevelopment. His proposal was chosen in an international competition in February organized by Rampe's agency, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., created by New York Governor George Pataki and former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

Master Plan

In the next several weeks, Libeskind will complete a revised plan; a jury will announce finalists for the design of a memorial; Silverstein, as leaseholder of the World Trade Center site, plans to pick architects for four proposed office buildings there; and Childs will unveil his own revised concept for the Freedom Tower, which he said may cost between $1 billion and $1.5 billion.

The tower is to be the tallest building in the world, replacing the fallen Twin Towers on New York's skyline as a symbol of renewal as well as commerce for the city and the U.S. after its worst terrorist attack.

A timetable set by Pataki calls for groundbreaking in August 2004, around the time of the Republican National Convention in New York from Aug. 30 to Sept. 2 that year.

If all goes according to plan, by 2008 the Freedom Tower will look down on a Sept. 11 museum to the south; a new mass transit center, designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, will sit to the east; extensions of two streets will divide the site's 16 acres into four quadrants and at least two new public plazas. Still to come would be four other office towers, a memorial to those who died on Sept. 11, and at least two other cultural buildings.

Progress

In separate interviews, Pataki, Childs, Libeskind, Rampe and other people involved in the redevelopment said the two architects had made progress in unifying the divergent views that were not made public after their meeting in July.

``Having Daniel Libeskind and David Childs representing the public side and the private side coming to an agreement is a significant step to allow us as we have every step of the way to meet every deadline in an aggressive timeframe.'' Pataki said.

Yet two months after the July meeting, differences remain.

Libeskind, 57, envisioned the Freedom Tower as an office building with an adjoining slender spire on its side echoing the Statue of Liberty holding her torch to the sky. Its planned height of 1,776 feet (541 meters) was meant as a reminder of 1776, the year of American independence.

`Whipsawed Tower'

Childs, 62, said his own design for the tower will adapt that concept. The tower, for example, may be one building, not two linked structures as Libeskind originally envisioned it. He said he had criticized Libeskind's design because joining the spire and office building was unsafe.

``When you're 1,500 feet in the air, the world of nature rules -- wind and gravity,'' Childs said in the interview. He said the plan's ``whipsawed tower'' attached by walkways to a ``large blocky building'' might tear each other apart. They would only be made secure through extraordinarily expensive measures, he said.

Libeskind, in an interview, countered that engineers for Arup Group Ltd., a London-based engineering firm, had assessed its structural safety and cost efficiency.

David Scott, principal in charge of structures for Arup, said: ``We are reasonably comfortable that the building can be made both cost-effective and very robust.''

Libeskind said his more recent plans call for ``one singular united tower,'' and not two adjoining structures.

Harnessing Wind Power

Childs said that proposed revision by Libeskind would weave a largely symbolic spire into the tower that ``will act as if it were on top of the building.''

``There will be some issue about that,'' Childs predicted. ``There's some vestigial character he may want to keep, or I may think it would be a little bit dishonest.''

Childs said he also intended to change Libeskind's design to take advantage of the strong winds that blow down the Hudson River and through the site at skyscraper altitude.

``This building has the opportunity to generate virtually all of its own energy,'' Childs said. ``That will change the way the building looks.''

Libeskind said installing wind-driven generators could be achieved without changing the look of his design.

He said he remains convinced his concept of the Freedom Tower will prevail.

``I'm not expecting it will be some sort of different tower the people have not seen,'' Libeskind said. ``The tower will be the tower.''

$3.2 Billion Lease

As architect for Silverstein, the leaseholder, Childs has emphasized controlling costs. Silverstein leased the World Trade Center property for 99 years from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey just six weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, for $3.2 billion, the highest price ever paid for a single U.S. property.

``All these issues will continue to go on,'' said Childs. ``The costing issue has got to be resolved.''

Nonetheless, he said he was committed to Libeskind's vision.

At the July meeting, he said, ``I promised I would do whatever I could to see that the master plan is carried out.''

Rampe, the development agency chief, said he told the two architects ``to work something out.'' Then he left.

For three hours, the two architects met alone -- without food or drink, Childs recalled -- debating and sketching alternate visions on legal pads.

Outside, Libeskind's aides ordered pizza and soft drinks and waited -- among them Libeskind's wife, Nina, who runs his business affairs; a publicist; and lawyer Edward Hayes, a Court TV anchorman.

`A Lot of Pressure'

Rampe took repeated calls that night from Joe Cahill, Pataki's chief of staff. ``Certainly there was a lot of pressure to keep progress going forward,'' he said.

Mitchell Moss, director of New York University's Taub Urban Research Center, said Pataki's 2008 deadline ``is eminently doable. And there's nothing like a deadline to motivate work.''

``No one expects architects to get along,'' Moss said. ``Architects by definition are prima donnas.''

Libeskind is a Polish immigrant who lost relatives in the Holocaust. He designed Berlin's Jewish Museum.

His current commissions include a new wing for the Denver Art Museum and an addition to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Childs has designed almost half of New York's major buildings since the late 1980s, said Alexander Garvin, former Lower Manhattan Development Corp. vice president for planning.

`Solid and Safe'

His credits include Worldwide Plaza on Eighth Avenue and West 49th Street, and the Madison Avenue headquarters of Bear Stearns Cos.

Childs is a partner at Skidmore Owings & Merrill, the third- largest U.S. architectural design firm, after Hellmuth Obata & Kasselbaum and Gensler, according to Engineering News Record magazine.

``David is solid and safe,'' said Garvin, who, on behalf of the Lower Manhattan agency, worked with Childs on the rebuilding of developer Silverstein's 7 World Trade Center, destroyed by fire on Sept. 11. ``I don't think anyone would describe his work as groundbreaking. It's classical.''

Childs angered some victim family groups and admirers of the old trade center last year when he told Time Magazine the towers were symbols of ``the mid-century arrogance of architects. What they did to Lower Manhattan was an act of vandalism just as complete as Sept. 11.''

He now calls that remark ``poorly phrased.'' What he meant, he said, was that the World Trade Center and other urban renewal projects like Detroit's Renaissance Center tore up the fabric of the downtowns they were built in.

``He believes in streets and blocks,'' said Garvin. ``The old World Trade Center was the antithesis of that.''

Last Updated: September 11, 2003 07:38 EDT

[NyC MaNiAc]

I was thinking about how the Other Buildings on the site (Numbering 4, I think) Will be built by different architects.

At first I didn't like this. But it's starting to appeal to me more.

Those other towers will all be pretty huge, and I think 2 or 3 of the four will be over 1,000 feet.

If they all look the same, we won't be able to really like any single one, and we won't take in that they are 4 new buildings gracing the skyline.

If they are built differently, it will be like adding 4 new, different, modern scrapers to the Downtown Skyline, Something that is really needed.

What is everyone's views on this?

[Freedom Tower]

Personally, I don't want them to be too different. I like the way the world financial center looks, with all the towers very similar. Although I do agree with what you say. The WFC is a perfect example of this. You can't admire each of the buildings for their own because they look so alike. But I would prefer at least that they all have the same facade so it won't look like a mess. It'd be nice if they all had their own unique qualities(like the roofs on WFC) but still be similar in appearence(like the facades of WFC). This way you can at least tell they are part of the same complex. I also am glad that the tower will be one tower, instead of a spire connected to a tower. I agree that it'll be much safer. I also think it'll make it look much better. It will make the REAL office building seem taller. Since they are one building now, there can be no argument over what really is the Freedom Tower and what its real height is. Also, hearing about this wind power, I'm getting very excited. I hope they can make it work.

[Kris]

October 23, 2003

Visions for Tower Clash at Trade Center Site

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/10/23/nyregion/23REBU1184.jpg
The architects David M. Childs, left, and Daniel Libeskind, center, with Larry A. Silverstein at the trade center site in July.

Only 10 months before groundbreaking is expected to take place for the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site, the master planner of the site and the architect for the tower's developer, who are supposed to be collaborating, have reached an impasse on how the skyscraper should look.

Although the version being designed by David M. Childs, of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, for the developer, Larry A. Silverstein, has not been seen publicly, it is stylistically quite different from the widely publicized images of the Freedom Tower drawn up by Studio Daniel Libeskind as part of its master plan.

Mr. Libeskind has called for an asymmetrical composition: a slender, antenna-topped spire rising along the western edge of an office tower, abstractly complementing the Statue of Liberty on the skyline. Mr. Childs has proposed a more monolithic and symmetrical structure that would twist and taper as it rose, culminating in antennas surrounded by an open framework.

The differences are more than cosmetic. Without an agreed-upon aesthetic approach, there can be no detailed drawings. Without drawings, there can be no construction. So the pressure to find common ground is enormous, particularly since Gov. George E. Pataki has set Sept. 11, 2006, as the deadline for the topping off, or structural completion, of the Freedom Tower.

Asked whose vision would prevail, those involved answered yesterday that the collaborative effort would resume and that Mr. Libeskind and Mr. Childs would pick up again after an uneasy meeting four days ago.

"Every artistic collaboration in history had its fits and starts, but they are ultimately judged on what they produced," said Matthew Higgins, chief operating officer of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which is planning the site with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

"In this case," Mr. Higgins said, "we are confident that Libeskind and Childs will design a Freedom Tower that will make our entire nation proud." He said the corporation was not even considering the prospect that the two architects would fail in a collaborative effort.

Mr. Libeskind said he had tremendous respect for Mr. Childs's ability. "We both have strong opinions about design," he said. "Nothing worthwhile was ever created without some conflict, and what emerges from a collaboration should be even greater than the sum of its parts."

Employees of Studio Daniel Libeskind, at 2 Rector Street, are working in the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill office at 14 Wall Street. "Sometimes we shoot quickly ahead and sometimes it slows down," Mr. Childs said. "We're proceeding toward what we both believe will be a magnificent end result."

And Mr. Silverstein, while acknowledging that there were issues between the architects that "need to be worked through," said yesterday that he still expected the collaboration would produce an exceptional tower.

But these public pleasantries do not change the fundamentally awkward arrangement — by no means unique to the trade center site — that arises when prominent architects are compelled to work together, one of them on a master plan for a complex, one of them on a building design within the complex.

Complicating matters is that while the Port Authority owns the 16-acre site, Mr. Silverstein is the long-term leaseholder. So the redevelopment process has long reflected the tension between the needs of the public and those of a commercial landlord who is expected to have at least $3.5 billion in insurance proceeds with which to finance reconstruction.

Mr. Libeskind's master plan for the site was chosen in February by the Port Authority and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation after an international competition that, at one point, included Skidmore. Seen around the world, the Libeskind concept, called Memory Foundations, showed an array of towers around the memorial area, rising to a 1,776-foot skyscraper at the northwest corner of the site, which Governor Pataki named the Freedom Tower.

In May, Mr. Silverstein said Mr. Libeskind would not actually design the Freedom Tower, though he promised that it would "reflect the spirit of Dan's site plan." Instead, he chose Mr. Childs, with whom he was already working on the 7 World Trade Center office building project across Vesey Street.

Two months later, the development corporation announced a "historic collaboration" on the tower between the Skidmore firm, which was to serve as "design architect and project manager," and the Libeskind studio, which was to be the "collaborating architect during the concept and schematic design phases" and a "full member of the project team."

What must be resolved, however, is the vital issue of whether the tower is meant to be a hybrid of distinctive ideas or a Skidmore, Owings & Merrill design that will be critiqued by Studio Daniel Libeskind.

A revised version of the Memory Foundations plan that was presented last month continued to show an asymmetrical, angular Freedom Tower with a side spire rising to a pinnacle.

Asked at the time whether the completed building would resemble his model, Mr. Libeskind replied, "Well, I'm an optimist."

Mr. Childs and Mr. Libeskind appeared together three weeks ago with three more architects whom Mr. Silverstein has brought into the project: Norman Foster, Fumihiko Maki and Jean Nouvel. "This is not an assault on Danny's talent," Mr. Childs said that afternoon, noting that the master plan always anticipated the participation of a number of architects.

This week, as efforts were going on behind the scenes to smooth over the differences between the architects, Mr. Libeskind gave a lecture about the design process at the National Building Museum in Washington.

"Look, I come from a Hasidic background," he said on Tuesday night. "I know forced marriages and they always worked for a long time."


Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

[JMGarcia]

The result should be fascinating. Maybe they should get public input on the issue. ;) :lol:

Remember these proposals....

http://mysite.verizon.net/vze26pnp/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/I3.jpg

http://mysite.verizon.net/vze26pnp/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/I4.jpg

http://mysite.verizon.net/vze26pnp/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/I2.jpg

[Harmonicaman]

Nice graphics, JM Garcia!

The Newsday.com write-up takes a much more conciliatory tone than the NY Times, but it contains a few contradictions. In the second paragraph we find this quote concerning tomorrows important P&D meeting:

" Sources close to Libeskind said that Childs, with Silverstein's support, will not budge from his design for the building and that Libeskind is prepared to walk out if his vision is compromised."

But at the bottom of the article is this Libeskind Quote:

"I have a tremendous respect for David's (Childs) ability, and we both have strong opinions about design," Libeskind said. "Nothing worthwhile was ever created without some conflict, and what emerges from a collaboration should be even greater than the sum of its parts. The Freedom Tower will be no exception."

Link to the whole Newsday.com press item:

http://www.newsday.com/business/printedition/ny-bzwtc233506419oct23,0,362252.story?coll=ny-business-print

[Kris]

Meeting Of Minds In Tower Design

By Katia Hetter
STAFF WRITER

October 23, 2003

The two architects in charge of the World Trade Center site's first new building are struggling to reach agreement on its design and will meet tomorrow to sort out differences, sources said yesterday.

Daniel Libeskind's initial design for the trade center site, which included the 1,776-foot-tall Freedom Tower, was selected in February. Leaseholder Larry Silverstein's architect, David Childs, was named leader of the building's final design team.

Despite yesterday's public proclamations of a collaborative partnership, sources say the two architects have been arguing about the Freedom Tower's design since their last agreement was reached after an eight-hour negotiation session in July.

Sources close to Libeskind said that Childs, with Silverstein's support, will not budge from his design for the building and that Libeskind is prepared to walk out if his vision is compromised.

"Friday's meeting will ensure that the design of the Freedom Tower stays on schedule," said Matt Higgins, chief operating officer of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., which hired Libeskind.

Libeskind and Silverstein are bound by Gov. George Pataki's charge to lay the Freedom Tower's foundation in August 2004 and to complete the project by Sept. 11, 2006, the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attack.

Libeskind has shown willingness to compromise, said one source, such as raising the memorial space from 70 feet below street level to 30 feet below street level; adding television antennae to the top of the Freedom Tower; and shifting the placement of the five office towers slightly to make them more attractive to potential tenants.

Still, he did not have to compromise in other areas. Pataki would not allow Silverstein to move the Freedom Tower from the site's northwest corner closer to the transit hub. The towers have become slimmer, but the basic size and shape has not changed.

It's not clear what their disagreements are or how far apart they are.

Asked if Childs was unwilling to change his proposal, Silverstein spokesman Howard Rubenstein said Childs "has always said he will work with Libeskind to come up with an excellent and acceptable plan."

"David Childs and Daniel Libeskind have been working collaboratively since July to design the world's tallest building, the Freedom Tower, on the timetable laid out by Governor Pataki," Rubenstein said. "As is customary in any highly complex design effort, issues have arisen from time to time that need to be worked through. That process is continuing, and we expect that the resulting Freedom Tower will be exceptional in design and redefine the skyline of New York."

Libeskind acknowledged the dispute in a separate statement.

"I have a tremendous respect for David's ability, and we both have strong opinions about design," Libeskind said. "Nothing worthwhile was ever created without some conflict, and what emerges from a collaboration should be even greater than the sum of its parts. The Freedom Tower will be no exception."


Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.

[TonyO]

I would venture to guess that since Libeskind's input has been sidelined up until now, this has more to do with "other" people not caring for Childs' initial design.

[Harmonicaman]

An even more pessimistic view of the Child/Libeskind impasse is offered in this NY Daily News item about the WTC site design controversy:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/129777p-116012c.html

[ZippyTheChimp]

Might as well have the full spectra of news reporting.

The NY Post

LIBESKIND STORMS OUT IN WTC BATTLE

By WILLIAM NEUMAN

October 23, 2003 -- Ground Zero master planner Daniel Libeskind stormed out of a meeting about the design of the site's Freedom Tower, threatening to break up his collaboration with the project's lead architect, David Childs, sources told The Post.
After the Monday afternoon face-off, Libeskind also ordered several staffers working at Childs' Skidmore Owings & Merrill offices to pack up their equipment and leave - but at least two of them returned to work the next day.

Libeskind and Childs - the architect hired by WTC developer Larry Silverstein - have had an uneasy collaboration for months. But their differences came to a head this week - and in the aftermath, both sides were pointing fingers.

"Childs said, 'Take it or leave it; this is what we're building.' Libeskind said, 'This doesn't fit into the master plan, and that's not acceptable,' " said one source.

But other sources said it was Libeskind who delivered the ultimatum.

"The guy [Libeskind] stormed out. He wants to build his own building," said a source.

Libeskind wants a tower similar to the one in his original master plan, with an asymmetrical, skyscraping spire and antenna that evokes the raised torch of the Statue of Liberty.

Childs is working on a design that's markedly different, incorporating a 70-story office tower that's topped by an unoccupied, lattice-like structure that rises into the skyline.

Both architects have been working on designs that exceed the symbolic 1,776-foot height of Libeskind's original sketch.

Under pressure from development officials, the two agreed to work together last July, with Childs as the lead architect and Libeskind in a vague role as collaborator.

Officials downplayed the imbroglio and said they will bring the two together for another meeting tomorrow.

"It's a typical architectural back and forth," said a source. "They're actually getting close [to solving their differences]."

But another source said the architects' strongly contrasting visions could lead to a final falling-out.

Libeskind has never built a skyscraper before and is primarily interested with coming up with an abstract shape that meshes with his master plan, sources said. Childs has built numerous office towers.

Adding to the pressure on the two architects, Gov. Pataki is planning a major speech on the progress of lower Manhattan recovery for Oct. 30, and sources said he wants to point to their collaboration as a sign things are moving ahead.

One insider said Libeskind may be hoping the stand-off will persuade the governor to side with him.

[NYatKNIGHT]

I'm glad Libeskind is challenging him, Childs needs to be rattled out of his symmetry for this tower, I'm guessing. But I am curious to see both designs - they should let us decide!

[JMGarcia]

they should let us decide!

Absolutely, although I doubt if that will happen.

IMO, the Freedom Tower was the weakest link in Libeskind's original proposal. I felt it seriously needed to be beefed up. It sounds like Childs' design might do that. On the other hand, I'm not a believer in Childs' ability to stand up to Silverstein's "cost conciousness" to get the best design possible. Its also sounds like Libeskind's will have enclosed space (non-office) go up much higher than Childs'.

I'm looking for the tower with a good deal of impact on the skyline. Its impossible to tell which version will have it at this point.

[NYatKNIGHT]

I have to say I was hoping there would be some changes to the tower from what we've seen in the renderings. I've never liked the tower on the side, and it always seemed too narrow from the one angle, so I too hoped Childs would beef it up. But 70 floors and then an unoccupied latticework.....I need to see it.

[dbhstockton]

I don't think the "Freedom Tower" needs to be beefed up. Don't get me wrong, I think it needs to be tall in order to insure that nothing built downtown is taller than it for at least a generation or two. But I look at any rendering, and the thing is already outrageously huge, towering at twice the height of the massive American Express tower in front of it. Next time you look at the downtown skyline -- in real life -- honestly try to visualize it. It's more than OK if its bulk appears somewhat diminished at some angles-- it would be a nice effect, akin to what Childs almost accomplished at TWC. Libeskind, stick to your guns.

[Harmonicaman]

From the NY Post item:

"Adding to the pressure on the two architects, Gov. Pataki is planning a major speech on the progress of lower Manhattan recovery for Oct. 30, and sources said he wants to point to their collaboration as a sign things are moving ahead."

I wonder if Pataki might just also be planning to drop the names of the WTC Memorial Competition finalists in this speech? ...just some mindless speculation.:-(

[dbhstockton]

Brain droppings?

[Kris]

October 24, 2003

Let the Public See the Plans

A new creative spat over the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan surfaced this week. As David Dunlap wrote in yesterday's New York Times, Daniel Libeskind, the master designer for the site, and David Childs, the architect for the developer, Larry Silverstein, appear to be at odds over the 1,776-foot tower that will be the focal point for the site's new skyline. Mr. Libeskind originally sketched a sleek, asymmetrical tower that seemed to echo the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. Mr. Childs's design is not available to the public, but descriptions of a monolith that twists as it tapers upward make it sound a lot different than the structure envisioned in the Libeskind plan.

Two independent, talented architects cannot be expected to collaborate easily, but they will have to work together if Gov. George Pataki hopes to make his deadline of starting the tower next summer.

Nobody expects the final plan to look precisely the same as the powerful Libeskind proposal that won an international competition earlier this year. That does not mean, however, that the essence of Mr. Libeskind's plan should be slowly chipped away as Mr. Silverstein's architects convert it into reality.

While Mr. Libeskind is said to be unhappy about the Silverstein version of his tower, he makes it a practice not to complain publicly. That makes it hard for New Yorkers to tell whether he has cause for alarm because they do not know what the new tower looks like. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation should clear up the mystery by putting the Silverstein-Childs plan on its Web site. That way, people other than Mr. Libeskind can assess whether the changes do serious artistic damage to his grand design. This is a town full of architects and artists, and more than its share of critics. And the public's discerning eye has already saved the city once, in 2002, when the original site proposal was a mediocre cluster of monoliths.

In recent weeks, the rebuilding at the site has progressed steadily: the temporary PATH train station is almost ready to open, and better leases for the city's airports will help clear up tax issues for the site. With all that good news, delays caused by a tussle between the two architectural superstars would be a disheartening step backward.


Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

[Jasonik]

NY Post

GOV BACKS LIBESKIND IN TOWER STRUGGLE

By WILLIAM NEUMAN and DAREH GREGORIAN
------------------------------------------------------------------------

October 24, 2003 -- Gov. Pataki yesterday backed Daniel Libeskind's vision for a Ground Zero Freedom Tower - weighing in on a dispute over the structure's design that threatens to stall the progress of lower Manhattan's recovery from 9/11.

"I think it's very important that the vision that was enunciated for the master site plan be ultimately what is constructed at Ground Zero," Pataki said, when asked about the fight between Libeskind and David Childs, the tower's lead architect.

"We will continue to work to make sure that every deadline we have set for progress in lower Manhattan is, in fact, achieved, and that will include the Freedom Tower being the Freedom Tower, and not just another office tower."

Libeskind stormed out of a meeting with Childs on Monday because of a design disagreement.

Libeskind wants an asymmetrical spire, while Childs has proposed a lattice-like structure rising into the sky.
*
Meanwhile, the Port Authority said it bears no responsibility for the 1993 terror bombing of the World Trade Center, and wants the 175 pending lawsuits against it tossed out.

Arnold Kolikoff, a lawyer for the PA, told a Manhattan Supreme Court hearing yesterday that the bistate agency didn't have a responsibility to provide security for the Twin Towers' underground parking garage because the building had never been attacked before.

Victor Kovner, a lawyer for the bombing victims, said the agency had plenty of "notice," and pointed to two reports that warned the underground garage would be "highly vulnerable" to a car bombing.

[Kris]

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com

PA dodging Ground Zero tower feud

By MAGGIE HABERMAN
and GREG GITTRICH
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Friday, October 24th, 2003

The Port Authority will not help resolve a clash between a pair of architects designing the signature skyscraper at Ground Zero, a top official said yesterday.

The fight between architects Daniel Libeskind and David Childs over the appearance of the Freedom Tower threatens to delay Gov. Pataki's aggressive rebuilding timetable.

But PA Executive Director Joseph Seymour said it's not up to the bistate agency to make Libeskind and Childs get along, even though the agency owns Ground Zero.

"We are not building the building," Seymour said.

That job falls to developer Larry Silverstein, who holds a 99-year lease on the twin towers' site, Seymour said.

He added that the PA is working with Silverstein to approve a design for the tower, which would become the world's tallest building.

But Pataki, who is set to give a speech to business leaders detailing downtown's progress next week, appeared to pick sides in the squabble yesterday.

Pataki said it was important to "maintain the vision" in Libeskind's overall plan for Ground Zero, which won a worldwide contest in February.

"I think it is very important that the vision that was enunciated for the master site plan be ultimately constructed at Ground Zero," he said.

"The public spoke, and they want it to be a Freedom Tower that stands as a symbol of the strength, the confidence and the unity of the people in New York, and that's what we're going to see the people get."

Libeskind took a secondary role in designing the tower this summer when Silverstein made Childs the lead architect.

Simmering disagreements between Childs and Libeskind exploded Monday when they had a fight over the tower's appearance and Libeskind walked out of Childs' office.

Pataki wants the cornerstone of the tower laid by August - before Republicans converge on the city for their national convention.

[edp828]

Thank goodness for Gov Pataki! I really hate David Childs and SOM b/c of the fact that they design every freeken building in NY and Chicago! And they all have the same result = BORING. At least Liebenskis are somewhat interesting. If the Freedom Tower were left entirely up to Childs, we would have just a squat rectangle w/ a huge spire on it. Picture it:



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[JMC]

We probably won't even know what this thing's *really* gonna look like, until the cranes come down...I'm also happy that SOM is involved and that the owner of property (Larry) is calling the shots.

[Kris]

October 25, 2003

Architects Agree to Meet to Work Out Tower Design

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

Trying to resolve their differences over the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site, the tower's architect and Daniel Libeskind, the site's master planner, agreed yesterday to work together on a design that would more closely follow the Libeskind plan.

Mr. Libeskind is expected to meet early next week with David M. Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, who is designing the tower — the site's skyline emblem — for the developer Larry A. Silverstein.

When the week began, the architects were at an impasse that threatened to slow the progress of development at ground zero. Mr. Libeskind championed an asymmetrical composition of tower and spire that has been in the public eye since his plan was unveiled last year. Mr. Childs proposed a more ordered, symmetrical structure that would twist and taper as it rose.

In any large-scale project involving more than one architect, there are inevitably conflicts between the master plan and the design of individual buildings. And the plan advanced by Studio Daniel Libeskind is still very much a conceptual framework, not an exact blueprint for construction.

But Mr. Libeskind stressed that several features were needed to make the Freedom Tower consistent with his vision: that it be asymmetrical, abstractly echoing the Statue of Liberty; that it reach 1,776 feet, though antennas could exceed that; that its western facade align with the wall marking the foundation of the original trade center; and that it crown an ascending spiral of towers.

Gov. George E. Pataki has set Sept. 11, 2006, as the deadline for the topping off, or structural completion of the tower. He said on Thursday that it was "very important that the vision that was enunciated for the master site plan be ultimately what is constructed at ground zero."

Mr. Childs said yesterday that he was "working hard to incorporate the concepts of the master plan and to make those essential features of it as strong as I possibly can." Nina Libeskind, Mr. Libeskind's wife and business partner, said, "We're all feeling more confident about the future."

Mr. Silverstein, who met with Mr. Pataki this week, said through a spokesman yesterday, "The governor will get what he called for: a soaring, wonderful, iconic building."

"We have to build this building," Mr. Silverstein was quoted as saying by his spokesman, Howard Rubenstein, "and we have to build it on time."


Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

[JMC]

Seeing how the ESB was built in 366 days, of limestone...theoretically, Leibeskind and Childs could grumble for another year..we have to asume this thing is going to be all pre-fab curtain wall...Anyone know if orders have been placed for materials? Anyone in the construction management biz?

[Harmonicaman]

Here's an image of construction materials that have recently arrived on site:

http://www.cepalm.com/cepalm/media/large-feature-lego.jpg

[TLOZ Link5]

Tee hee.

[Freedom Tower]

Awww, I clicked that link with some excitement, I must admit :oops:

[TomAuch]

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/9294.htm

TOWER TURNAROUND

By WILLIAM NEUMAN
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
October 28, 2003 -- EXCLUSIVE

Daniel Libeskind's striking vision for a "Freedom Tower" at Ground Zero has morphed into a more conventional glass-and-steel office building attached to an angular spire, as shown by one of the architect's new drawings obtained by The Post.

Libeskind has been pushing this revised version of his tower design in a fight with trade center developer Larry Silverstein and his architect David Childs, who is the lead architect for the site's signature building.

At the urging of development officials, the architects are scheduled to meet today for the first time since Libeskind stormed out of a meeting with Childs last Monday, refusing to work on a different design.

Childs' design has not been made public.

The new rendering by Libeskind - one of several he is said to be working with - differs from earlier versions in that he leaves out the slashing diagonal lines that crisscrossed the face of the building in previous images he has pasted onto the tower's surface the sort of standard glass and steel "curtain wall" façade that can be found on many Midtown buildings.

A spire, evoking the raised torch of the Statue of Liberty, tops out at the symbolic height of 1,776 feet, but technical documents compiled by Libeskind say a broadcast antenna on "a single mast above the spire may extend to 2,100 [feet]."

In other modifications to Libeskind's tower, the Ground Zero planner has made the office building and spire part of a single structure. The technical documents obtained by The Post also describe "extensive areas of [the] spire without cladding," suggesting the upper section could also be made into an open framework.

Childs' building is said to be a symmetrical tower that twists and tapers as it rises, with 70 stories of offices. Above the occupied space the tower would turn into an open latticework framework that rises into the skyline.

* These names were added yesterday to the medical examiner's list of confirmed dead in the WTC attacks:

Christoffer Mikael Carstanjen, 33; Marlanne Macfarlane, 34.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So much for Libeskind's plan :(

[ZippyTheChimp]

Did I miss a link? What new drawing?

[NoyokA]

A typical office building, how fitting.

[NoyokA]

http://galleries.soaringtowers.org/albums/Stern/libe.jpg

[NYatKNIGHT]

That's our new icon?

This is Libeskind's latest? Now I HAVE to see Childs' design.

[Jasonik]

Awkward... sorry.

Next up: David Childs

[NYatKNIGHT]

Observation deck?

Better glass, though.

http://galleries.soaringtowers.org/albums/Stern/libe.jpg

[NoyokA]

I need sometime to hypothesize a response. But from the looks of this rendering the building has atleast 80 floors! However no observation deck near 1776 feet.

[Freedom Tower]

I think you're right. Look at this "a single mast above the spire may extend to 2,100 [feet]." I sure hope they dont mean a mast on the pole on the spire. Do they mean the pole spire or the building-like spire? Why does this have to be so confusing? Let's just build a supertall REAL 1776 footer!

CALL UP CHILDS, THIS RENDERING SUCKS. I didn't want the spire to be open lattice-work. That's an awful replacement for the twin towers, IMO.

[TomAuch]

WTF!!!! :evil: It hardly looks differant from the last rendering. Stern, is this REALLY Libeskind's new rendering, or just some rejected version stolen by the NY Post?



http://galleries.soaringtowers.org/albums/Stern/libe.jpg

[dbhstockton]

Pretty weak. Have you noticed that with each successive rendering, the details within the silhouette become increasingly drab? There is nothing interesting going on until a peak starts to form 2/3rds of the way up. And the spike looks decorative and insubstantional . It was an integral architectural element in Libeskind's original design.

[JMC]

Hmm..I like this rendering...Nice and corporate-sqare floor plates with corner offices... And, didn't some editorialist call that goofy Leibeskind garden(spike) a Minarette, anyway?

[ZippyTheChimp]

From asymmetrical to unbalanced...and boring.

A comparison to a minaret is typical of the inflamatory nonesense published by the NY Post.

[Derek2k3]

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/9294.htm

The new rendering by Libeskind - one of several he is said to be working with - differs from earlier versions in that he leaves out the slashing diagonal lines that crisscrossed the face of the building in previous images he has pasted onto the tower's surface the sort of standard glass and steel "curtain wall" façade that can be found on many Midtown buildings.


I'll wait until he comes up with something final and until I hear more details before I judge.

[JMGarcia]

Some details:

Floors: 88
Top of "building" section 1286 Feet
Top of "enclosed" space in the spire 1410 Feet
Top of "point" on spire 1776 Feet
Top of Antenna 2000-2100 Feet

[Gulcrapek]

The top of 'building' height is the only nice thing I see...

[Jasonik]

http://www.ispygraphics.com/assets/images/mryucklarge.gif

This really just raises the bar for the memorial, which must be truly breathtaking.

[Jasonik]

Libeskind is not the visionary architect designing for the public and for architectural posterity; he is an architect scared of losing his position with the big bad developer who holds all the cards, so he blands it down and tries to make it safe and familiar to the developer/tennants.

Good solid blandness is what David Childs has in spades. If Libeskind tries to play by SOM's rules he will lose. Libeskind will only prevail if he is true to his vision- radical and visionary. He has got to make them come to him.

I'll give him that those upper offices will be spectacular, provided they are not totally given to housing machinery.

[JMC]

Real-estate is subject to market forces...in this mileu, form follows function. Childs creates a way in which Leibeskind's form *can* function.

[TLOZ Link5]

Wellllll...it's not THAT bad. The latticework spire could use some work, though.

[ZippyTheChimp]

After two years, do you really think that this project is solely about market forces. If that were the case, there would have been no public input, no open design selection. Silverstein would have sat down with the PA and worked out a deal.

[DougGold]

What is the "freedom" part of the freedom tower suppost to represent? Meekness and latticework? This is the lamest supertall I've ever seen. New York City invented the skyscraper, and now we're killing it. :evil:

[Kris]

WTC Architects Bury Hatchet

By Monty Phan
Staff Writer

October 29, 2003, 12:11 AM EST

The two feuding architects charged with designing the first new building at the World Trade Center site met yesterday and agreed to put aside their differences in order to come up with a final plan for the tower, a source said yesterday.

A months-long disagreement between Daniel Libeskind, whose design for the site includes the 1,776-foot-tall Freedom Tower, and David Childs, leader of the tower's final design team and the architect of the site's leaseholder, Larry Silverstein, could be on hold. Yesterday, Silverstein called Childs and Libeskind together to "put aside any personal differences, put aside any separate designs and get in a room and resolve something," said the source who attended the meeting, during which there were no discussions about the actual design. That goal was accomplished, the source said.

Libeskind and Silverstein are bound by Gov. George Pataki's charge to lay the Freedom Tower's foundation in August 2004 and to complete the project by the attacks' fifth anniversary on Sept. 11, 2006. That means the two architects needed to come to an agreement on the final plan "rather urgently," the source said. Libeskind's spokeswoman declined to comment and Childs could not be reached late yesterday.


Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.

[Kris]

http://galleries.soaringtowers.org/albums/Stern/libe.jpg

It looks like a marlin, which is unseemly.

[TLOZ Link5]

Kinda looks like the Bertelsmann Building, albeit much more elegant.

[Jasonik]

It looks like a marlin, which is unseemly.

Ouch, to yankee fans this is like twisting the marlin,- I mean knife. :wink:

To loosly quote David Childs-

'Libeskind wants to build an office tower with a sword strapped to the side.'

Indeed he does.

[BrooklynRider]

Foregoing any comment on the "erector set" inspired "thing" sticking out the top, I think it reflects a move toward utilizingthe very successful elements of TWC's towers. Of course this is perfectly appropriate for a Childs building - rehash, rehash, rehash.

A "soaring monument", uh, I don't think so...

[NYguy]

The problem with the rendering Libeskind released is that you can't see the spire for the building at that angle...


http://www.pbase.com/image/22755002/original.jpg


http://www.pbase.com/image/22755006/original.jpg

[NYguy]

(NY Post)

SHOW US THE PLAN, LARRY

October 29, 2003 -- We've made no secret of our disdain for celebrity architect Daniel Libes- kind's bizarre vision for the World Trade Center site - even with its latest design changes, as reported in yesterday's Post.
But at least the public knows in the most general terms what Libeskind would like to see built - he himself never having actually constructed a high-rise building.

The same, unfortunately, isn't true for the plans being put forward by David Childs, the lead designer of the Freedom Tower and the choice of site developer Larry Silverstein.

Despite last week's rancorous dispute, which threatened to yet again stall the beginning of Lower Manhattan's reconstruction, Childs' design for the Freedom Tower has yet to be made public. What are he and Silverstein waiting for?

Under a deal reached last summer, Libeskind ceded ultimate authority for designing the Freedom Tower - the 2,000-foot-plus structure that anchors the rebuilt Ground Zero site - to Childs, who also serves as project manager.

Libeskind remains as a "consulting architect" during the design phase, and has been modifying his initial concept - the same concept he once swore could not be modified without destroying his entire vision.

What little New Yorkers know of Childs' proposal comes via sources: As The Post's William Neuman reports, it is "said to be a symmetrical tower that twists and tapers as it rises, with 70 stories of offices.

"Above the occupied space, the tower would turn into an open latticework framework that rises into the skyline."

But the public hasn't seen any designs - and apparently is not about to in the near future.

For better or worse, this entire process was made a very public one on the orders of Gov. Pataki, who effectively controls the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.

Given this history, there is no call for keeping any designs secret.

Larry Silverstein was adamant in demanding that his architect be the one in charge of designing the Freedom Tower.

And he won that fight.

Now that he's gotten what he wanted, the public needs to see - now, not later - precisely what Team Silverstein intends to build.

Repeat: Now, not later.

[NoyokA]

Hey! Welcome back NyGuy.

Will you still be posting at skyscraperpage.com?

[NYguy]

Maybe, maybe not. I'm still having trouble logging in and posting here in this forum.

Anyway, public pressure may convince Pataki to release some of Childs plans sooner...

[NYatKNIGHT]

Though I would love to see a finalized Freedom Tower plan, it suddenly feels like a rush to get something designed as soon as possible (for Pataki's political ends, or before the public can weigh in on the weak Silverstein design).

[Freedom Tower]

Well I must admit, 88 floors and 1286 feet to the top of the REAL roof doesn't seem that bad at all. However, from there it does go bad. Then you get a spire with a roof, then lattice work section without a roof, then an antenna. I'm glad the spire goes to 1776 feet but that is open lattice work. No roof at all. I am at least glad that occupyable space goes up to 1286 feet. And the roof of the spire goes a little bit higher.

[TLOZ Link5]

The occupied part, at least, will be the tallest building in the City.

[yanni111]

Christian where did you get that rendering from? Thats not the new design right? It looks exactly the same as the old design just from another angle.

[JMC]

Harkening back to Modern Architecture class, from my senior year of college (coffee, slides, cute girls)...I'd have to say that as dumb as the lattice work may be, at least it serves to emphasice the monolithic building that's supporting it...The memorial is, by way of the lattice work, an extension of TRADE (as in WTC), rather than the other way around...as it were, origionally.

If building is the healed wound (replaced office space), the lattice work is the scar (space that was, literally, once occupied).

[Jasonik]

Harkening back to Modern Architecture class, from my senior year of college (coffee, slides, cute girls)...I'd have to say that as dumb as the lattice work may be, at least it serves to emphasice the monolithic building that's supporting it...The memorial is, by way of the lattice work, an extension of TRADE (as in WTC), rather than the other way around...as it were, origionally.

If building is the healed wound (replaced office space), the lattice work is the scar (space that was, literally, once occupied).

It's no wonder why I think 'Modern' architecture is a load of BS, if this is the way it is discussed academically, (no offense intended JMC, I hope you enjoyed the girls and the coffee).

Could it be a representation of the American credo, 'Walk softly and carry a big stick.' (in this case a hollow threat)?

[NYguy]

Christian where did you get that rendering from? Thats not the new design right? It looks exactly the same as the old design just from another angle.

While its basically the same shape (Libeskind has been fighting to keep it that way), what the drawing shows are the design changes made to the skyscraper itself, including the skin. Libeskind has been willing to change that much, but doesn't want anybody to tamper with his spire!

As far as the height of the occupied building, that remains left to Silverstein to decide, Libeskind can draw what he likes. But if the spire itself does rise to 1,776 in his plan, the building would have to rise also to fit his plan.

I only realized a few days ago exactly what he meant by the building echoing the Statue of Liberty, and it really does resemble the upper torso with the raised torch. Looking at it from that perspective, its almost as silly as any of the other amatuer proposals submitted by the public. And the current Statue of Liberty doesn't need a replacement.


http://wtc.e27.com/press/middle/skyline.jpg


AS far as Childs design is concerned, I'd take his design over Libeskind's simply because it will be more of a towering, single structure - not a building and spire embraced. I think in effect what you would have is something like the skyscraper placed inside Libeskind's spire.

I hope we at least get to see what Childs was proposing before the hybrid.

[Kris]

Christian where did you get that rendering from? Thats not the new design right? It looks exactly the same as the old design just from another angle.
Stern scanned it from the Post.

[NoyokA]

yanni111 wrote:
Christian where did you get that rendering from? Thats not the new design right? It looks exactly the same as the old design just from another angle.

Stern scanned it from the Post.

NyGuy scanned it from the Post. :oops: :oops:

[JMGarcia]

Generally I dislike Childs work enough that I cannot give him the benefit of the doubt that he has designed a more impressive building. If his glass stops 300 feet and 18 stories shorter than Libeskind he's going to have to have an awfully impressive lattice work to make up for it.

[JMC]

Good article...technical details:

http://www.observer.com/pages/observatory.asp

In fact, according to sources, S.O.M. was as dissatisfied with these as the Libes-kind camp had been with Mr. Childs’ design.

For one thing, they were worried about money. Structural engineering programming had not been carried out on either tower, but it seemed to them that an asymmetrical tower would require immense internal structural steel to resist the lateral movement of the wind at its tremendous height, especially near the top. They said the tendency of an off-center spire would be to shear off the building, unless it were rooted firmly into the central core of the building. It is difficult to build a spire on top of the building that is rooted firmly into its central core but stands off to the side. Such considerations not only made the structural guts of the building appear to be extremely expensive—a consideration for their insurance-proceeds-starved client, Mr. Silverstein—but could bulk up the centers of each floor, leaving too little surrounding space to create office space attractive enough to compensate for the construction costs.

S.O.M. supporters are disdainful of Studio Daniel Libeskind’s ability to develop office towers. If Mr. Libeskind’s lack of experience building them is part of it, the greater part of it undoubtedly comes from S.O.M.’s own unparalleled productivity in the "supertall" category around the world

[NYguy]

Wow! That article gave the most details of the towers we have seen so far...

A week later, David Childs presented his tower designs in a meeting to Mr. Libeskind. Mr. Libeskind, by all accounts, was disappointed. The asymmetry in the design was not obvious from many vantage points elsewhere on the site. The twisting tower did not remain flush on its western face with the western slurry wall of Ground Zero. And the shape of the top was symmetrical looking—a vast square lattice-work crown incorporating four television antennae.

Mr. Libeskind’s design team went to work on a series of images of buildings that formed a sort of spectrum: on the left, the original Libeskind design. With each successive take, the design appeared to morph into the David Childs tower; the eighth design, at the right end of the spectrum, was Mr. Childs’.......

Mr. Childs seeks to remake the skyline with a muscular obelisk of Gothamesque beauty and Babel proportions. The feeling is of an epic strength that cannot possibly have sprung from the abject destruction wrought by nine men with box cutters on two airplanes: At 2,000 feet, it is higher than the tower proposed by Mr. Libeskind. That tower, rather than to remake Ground Zero as a bigger and sturdier version of what preceded it, contains the images of destruction and creation in its shard-like sculptured buildings surrounding the memorial pit at its center, anchored in the slurry walls of the excavated World Trade Center.


* I really want to see Childs' design now, before it changes...

[TonyO]

Mr. Childs seeks to remake the skyline with a muscular obelisk of Gothamesque beauty and Babel proportions. The feeling is of an epic strength that cannot possibly have sprung from the abject destruction wrought by nine men with box cutters on two airplanes:

Finally. This is in my opinion what Libeskind totally misses. The skyscraper that goes there should be something of strength....why design the tallest building in the world to look like broken glass?

I hope Childs wins out.

[NYatKNIGHT]

I only realized a few days ago exactly what he meant by the building echoing the Statue of Liberty, and it really does resemble the upper torso with the raised torch. Looking at it from that perspective, its almost as silly as any of the other amatuer proposals submitted by the public. And the current Statue of Liberty doesn't need a replacement.

http://wtc.e27.com/press/middle/skyline.jpg


At the CB1 meeting last spring, Libeskind better explained what he meant by this. It's not the Freedom Tower that is supposed to echo the Statue of Liberty, it's the spiraling of all 5 buildings that echoes the torch. That might be just as silly, but that's the symbolism he was going for. I have to say, I would never have compared the two in a million years, though I do like the spiral. However, I don't think the Freedom Tower has to look exactly as Libeskind designed it to achieve the same symbolism.

The Childs building sounds interesting, maybe even better, but so different from the Libeskind's that it seems there was no attempt at all to use the "concept and schematic design" of his tower (as was originally agreed upon).

[dbhstockton]

Revised designs of the Freedom Tower are to be unveiled in December-- just saw it on the news.

[NYguy]

The Childs building sounds interesting, maybe even better, but so different from the Libeskind's that it seems there was no attempt at all to use the "concept and schematic design" of his tower (as was originally agreed upon).

From the article it sounds as though there was an attempt from Childs, but we would have to see the tower to make that exact determination.

The two sides agreed that their joint design would have to somehow mark the 1,776-foot height that was a selling point of Mr. Libeskind’s original site design; that the "spiral feature" of the design should be preserved; that the Freedom Tower ought to read in some way as asymmetrical; and that the shape of the building would in some way reference the Statue of Liberty, as in Mr. Libeskind’s original design. But both sides already believed their separate designs for towers achieved those objectives.

[NYguy]

Revised designs of the Freedom Tower are to be unveiled in December-- just saw it on the news.

Looks like we'll have to wait again....

New design for WTC's Freedom Tower to be unveiled
Pataki outlines fast-track redevelopment timetable

A revised design for the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site will be unveiled in mid-December, Gov. George Pataki said Thursday as he outlined a redevelopment timetable that also calls for PATH commuter rail service to lower Manhattan to resume next month.

In remarks prepared for the Association for a Better New York/Downtown Lower Manhattan Association luncheon, Pataki said PATH service from New Jersey to the trade center site would resume Nov. 23, a month ahead of schedule.

The inaugural trip will be made by the same eight cars that were the last to leave the station on Sept. 11, 2001, taking with them commuters fleeing the terror attack, he said.

The revised design for the Freedom Tower will be released Dec. 15, Pataki said. The plan is a collaboration between Daniel Libeskind, who created the original concept for the 1,776-foot tower, and David Childs, who was hired by leaseholder Larry Silverstein to act as lead architect on the detailed design.

The tower deadline appears to serve as an impetus for the architects, to work out artistic differences that emerged in recent weeks. The two met earlier this week and promised to work together on the project.

Pataki, who previously voiced support for the original Freedom Tower design, reiterated that position in his remarks Thursday.

“Now that the plan for the site has been refined, it’s clear that Daniel Libeskind’s compelling vision emerged not only intact, but improved,” he said in prepared remarks.

Also next month, eight proposals for a memorial to Sept. 11 victims will go on public view at the Winter Garden. The plans, winnowed from a large field by a memorial jury, will be displayed the week of Nov. 17.

Pataki also said a pedestrian bridge over Vesey Street will open Nov. 22. The bridge will connect Battery Park City and the World Financial Center to the trade center and downtown.

The governor promised to undertake quality-of-life improvements in lower Manhattan as well.

The area around the New York Stock Exchange, now filled with concrete security barriers, will get a facelift under a plan to be unveiled next month. The plan, to be completed by spring, calls for more greenery and for security measures that blend into the surroundings.

[TLOZ Link5]

Heh, I already posted that on the "Ground Zero Developments" thread. Literally three minutes before you.

[NYguy]

Mr. Childs seeks to remake the skyline with a muscular obelisk of Gothamesque beauty and Babel proportions. The feeling is of an epic strength that cannot possibly have sprung from the abject destruction wrought by nine men with box cutters on two airplanes:

Finally. This is in my opinion what Libeskind totally misses. The skyscraper that goes there should be something of strength....why design the tallest building in the world to look like broken glass?

I hope Childs wins out.

Its too bad that we won't get to see Childs design as it is now, but a trimmed down, Libeskind-like version. Pataki strikes yet again...

[NYguy]

NY Observer
Mr. Childs seeks to remake the skyline with a muscular obelisk of Gothamesque beauty and Babel proportions. The feeling is of an epic strength that cannot possibly have sprung from the abject destruction wrought by nine men with box cutters on two airplanes: At 2,000 feet, it is higher than the tower proposed by Mr. Libeskind.

From the NY Times:
Mr. Childs has proposed a more monolithic and symmetrical structure that would twist and taper as it rose, culminating in antennas surrounded by an open framework.

Not to beat a dead horse, but from everything we've heard so far, it sounds as though 2,000 ft may have been a structural height in Childs' design. Libeskind wants the tower to top out at 1,776 ft rather than have a deck at that height...

[NYatKNIGHT]

....and that the shape of the building would in some way reference the Statue of Liberty, as in Mr. Libeskind’s original design.
Ah. Thanks. I won't ask why, but we shall see in December.


Its too bad that we won't get to see Childs design as it is now, but a trimmed down, Libeskind-like version. Pataki strikes yet again.

:x

[Freedom Tower]

Well I am glad to hear that Childs is designing a more symmetrical building that seems to be more powerful. Symmetrical is obviously safer because there won't be a spire ready to "shear off the side of the building". I would prefer a symmetrical building both because of the more impressive building it would create and because of the logic of a symmetrical tower. Also, a structural height of 2000 feet sounds much better than 1776, even with all the symbolism. However, I have a feeling that 2000 feet is with the antenna, and the news did not realize that. That would make it 100 feet shorter than Libeskinds... but we will wait until December to possibly see a mixture of the two buildings.

Best case scenario:

88+ floors, symmetrical and fully enclosed spire to a roof height of 1776 feet. Antenna reaching to 2100 feet.

Worst case scenario:

72 floors, asymmetrical lattice work spire. Enclosed to 1400 or so feet, open-lattice work to 1776 feet. Antenna on top

Well at least thats what I think... anything can happen.

[fluffypolly]

i think we should all give childs the benefit of the doubt, everyone is saying what a jerk he is, but we all have to remeber that his designs are scrutinized by silverstine. everyone is saying that childs builds boxy buildings, but if im not mistaking many people wanted the original towers back which were..............SUPRISE.. boxy buildings. i say we hold off on bashing childs until his design comes out perhap look how nice the time warner center came out. at the right angles it reflecs the sky, i think its perfect, as will the the new wtc.....

[NYguy]

Also, a structural height of 2000 feet sounds much better than 1776, even with all the symbolism. However, I have a feeling that 2000 feet is with the antenna, and the news did not realize that. That would make it 100 feet shorter than Libeskinds... but we will wait until December to possibly see a mixture of the two buildings.

I don't know, from some descriptions it sounds like the antennas may be inside the structure, rising out of the top of "vast, square box". That would seem to go hand in hand with an observation deck at 1,776 ft and antennas "surrounded by laticework", but who knows. I don't see why it can't be presented in its current form, to at least give us an idea of where Child's was going. I don't think Libeskind's garden-spire can support multiple antennas at the top, it would really alter his design. Childs inclusion of multiple antennae was no doubt influenced by the televison broadcasters who are paying for it. They will also have a say in the outcome.

There seems to be at least a few people who have seen Child's design, which is why some details have been coming out. That could not have been an accident, somebody wants it out. Pataki's doubletalk really doesn't clue us in on where the tower is headed. Saying Libeskind's vision for the sight remains could mean just that, the site plan.

December 15th may be six weeks away, but it will be in the middle of the busy Christmas season with less people taking note. But whereas before I was looking forward to the final design, if its just going to be a reworking of Libeskind's garden-spire I've already seen it, and I am not amused...:(


Ground Zero Tower Design to Be Revised

NEW YORK (AP) -- A revised design for the new skyscraper at the World Trade Center site will be unveiled in December, Gov. George Pataki said Thursday.

The plan will be a collaboration between Daniel Libeskind, who created the original concept for the 1,776-foot tower, and David Childs, who was hired by World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein to act as lead architect on the design.

The Dec. 15 deadline was apparently devised to prod a compromise on artistic differences that have emerged in past weeks between the architects. The two met earlier this week and promised to work together.

[BrooklynRider]

Here's a nice sleeping pill for the future...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Riverhead Books Acquires Forthcoming Book
by Daniel Libeskind, Renowned International Architect

Master Planner of the World Trade Center Reconstruction Project to Donate a Portion of Book Proceeds to Families of September 11th Victims

New York, New York, October 31, 2003 … Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), has acquired North American Rights to a forthcoming book by Daniel Libeskind, the internationally renowned, award-winning architect and designer. Born in Poland, to Jewish Holocaust survivors, Libeskind eventually immigrated to New York City, where he grew up in the Bronx. A virtuoso musician before he studied architecture, Libeskind has since designed iconic buildings around the world including the Jewish Museum Berlin and The Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, England. In February 2003, Libeskind was chosen as the Master Plan architect for the World Trade Center reconstruction.

Drawing on his uncommon background and international perspective, Libeskind’s as yet untitled book will explore ideas about tragedy, memory and hope, and the way architecture can reshape human experience. Libeskind is uniquely situated to introduce these ideas into public conversation, and his wish to do so was central to his decision to write the book – which Riverhead expects to publish in Fall 2004.

“Daniel Libeskind has lived an extraordinary life, has a truly global perspective and inhabits a large world of ideas, many of which he will bring to life in this provocative and exciting book,” said Editor Susan Lehman, who acquired and will edit the book for Riverhead. “Daniel is the perfect person to open an essential conversation about architecture, public space and public life.”

The author of several large format, illustrated books on architecture, Libeskind’s new book will be written in a spirited and accessible style; it is intended for readers interested in history, politics, and contemporary affairs, as well as those with a more specialized interest in architecture.

Libeskind will donate a portion of the proceeds from book sales to the Windows of Hope Family Relief Fund, which was formed to provide aid, future scholarships and funds to the families of the victims of the World Trade Center tragedy who worked in the food, beverage, and hospitality professions throughout the entire complex. “We are thrilled and honored that Daniel Libeskind will be helping to support our families,” said Darlene Dwyer, Executive Director of Windows of Hope. “Many of them are immigrants and Daniel understands the plight of an immigrant family.”


NOTE TO THE PRESS:

Daniel Libeskind is a renowned international figure in architecture and urban design. His practice includes major cultural and public institutions as well as commercial projects. In February 2003, he won the Master Plan competition for the world’s most well known building project: the World Trade Center Site.

Born in postwar Poland in 1946, Libeskind became an American citizen in 1965. He studied music in Israel and performed in New York City. He left music to study architecture and received his professional architectural degree at New York’s Cooper Union for Advancement of Science and Art in 1970 and a postgraduate degree in History and Theory of Architecture at the School of Comparative Studies at Essex University in 1972.

Libeskind’s practice in public architecture began with the building of the Jewish Museum Berlin, a competition he won in 1989. The museum opened to critical acclaim in September 2001. His museum for the city of Osnabruck, Germany, The Felix Nussbaum Museum, opened in July 1998. And in July 2002, the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester was opened to the public. He lived in Berlin from 1989 until early 2003, when he moved his entire practice to New York City.

Libeskind has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Deutscher Architekturpreis (German Architecture Prize) in 1999 for the Jewish Museum Berlin, the Goethe Medallion in 2000, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Architecture in 1996, and most recently, the Hiroshima Art Prize, which is awarded to artists whose work promotes peace. He is the author of several large-format illustrated books about his architectural projects, including The Space of Encounter, Radix Matrix, The Jewish Museum Berlin [German] and Countersign.

[NYguy]

An ineresting look back at this article from July, and how it relates even more now...

David Childs

By David Stanke

With a prepared statement of a simple paragraph, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. announced that a collaboration between two architects would be responsible for producing a “world-class icon” and a “powerful symbol of our nation’s resilience.” A power struggle with overtones of politics, money, and ego is settled. With all of the interests involved, the final decision about who takes the lead on the first building to return to the World Trade Center was a simple struggle between form and function. And the right decision was made: Function must take priority over form.

For all the platitudes of nearly two years espousing the symbolism and statements that must be made at the W.T.C., the first real issue is that it functions. Any other conclusion would imply that these 16 acres should be a $10 billion art project. Architecture differs from art in that it succeeds only when it supports the human activities for which it is created. We look at buildings, but if it were people just looking, the buildings would not be there. Art can be viewed and interpreted; architecture must first support the patterns of our lives. Daniel Libeskind is an artist, whose projects set the tone for museums, which have simple use patterns. David Childs designs functioning skyscrapers that must support a wide range of activity. Who would you have take the lead on this project? If you answered Daniel Libeskind, please answer again if it were your $2 billion or so for the Freedom Tower.

Anyone concerned that this decision reflects misinformed priorities should consider the nature and intent of the 9/11 attack (speaking only of the W.T.C. piece). It was not an attack on Western art. It was not an attack on American ideals. It was an attack on the engine that makes everything else in American run: business. The buildings themselves were there based on the success of American business. The massive quantities of art that were destroyed were purchased and supported by business. The vast majority of people who died were business people. A decision to let symbolism and concept dominate function and economics might feel good now, but in the long run, we would realize that we had built on a weak foundation.

Libeskind must now perform the essential task of all artists. Artists work within the physical boundaries of their medium to create works that speak to the human imagination. Buildings, like paint, metal, and wood, are ruled by specific physical laws and limitations. Artists may push the boundaries of those rules, but they cannot break them. It is the challenge and privilege of being Daniel Libeskind to work within structural and business limits to create a design that speaks to his vision (and please let that vision evolve) and establishes a loved piece of the New York cityscape.

As for how the deal was done, there are unfortunately too many signs on the surface of horse-trading that took place behind the scenes. If the idealism spouted in the aftermath of 9/11 had any meaning, rational men of good intent would come together freely seeking the best solutions.

But when Libeskind hires lawyer friends of Gov. George Pataki for representation, it is all too clear that decisions are made not on quality of work but on relationships to the decision maker.

Has the public trust been betrayed by allowing changes to the L.M.D.C. design contest winner? There are a number of facts that bear repeating. The Libeskind design was not the public favorite. It was one of three more or less equally favored in the polls.

And the Libeskind design was perhaps the most unique, invoking a reaction of either love or hate. In a one-on-one vote of Libeskind against the other favorites, those who disliked Libeskind would have rallied around the competition. Never mind that the rebuilding of the original W.T.C., perhaps the most popular option, was not even offered for public review. But as the political tide in favor of Libeskind became apparent, anyone who wanted to be part of the planning picture fell in line. Libeskind won the political battle, not the popular battle.

No one is betrayed by changing this plan.

We should all be grateful that Daniel Libeskind has agreed to work in collaboration rather than in control. A few months of being a cultural superstar could make one inflexible. But in the end, artists are not about control. The results of this design process will almost certainly benefit from collaboration. Simply being a part of this design process is a lifetime opportunity and learning to espouse one’s ideas without control is one of the life’s greatest lessons. The priorities are set. With the political and ego jockeying out of the way for this building, let’s hope that all of the participants focus on the real task: excellence in architecture.

[TonyO]

Thanks for posting that NYguy. What is even more outrageous is how Pataki is using 9/11 and the rebuilding as a political event. Noone seems to complain though...that's how f'd NY has been since the attacks. The same f'd that we are to let them push a mediocre plan through as the favorite. I'll be happy when this city gets its attitude back.

[Kris]

Blah blah blah.

NYguy, please include the articles' copyright notice, for legal and informative reasons. In this case though, the guess is easy - NY's cheapest toilet paper!

[NYguy]

Thanks for posting that NYguy. What is even more outrageous is how Pataki is using 9/11 and the rebuilding as a political event. Noone seems to complain though...that's how f'd NY has been since the attacks. The same f'd that we are to let them push a mediocre plan through as the favorite. I'll be happy when this city gets its attitude back.

It doesn't matter when the groundbreaking of Freedom Tower will be held - it won't help Pataki gather more support for Bush in NY, even if the convention is being held here.

Christian: not the cheapest toilet paper (that distinction goes elsewhere)

Downtown Express is published by
Community Media LLC.
Downtown Express | 487 Greenwich St., Suite 6A | New York, NY 10013

[NYguy]

Referring to recent arguments between architects Daniel Libeskind and David Childs over the design of the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower, Pataki urged those involved in the rebuilding process to "place the public's interest above self-interest.''

It would seem the only one with any self-interest involved would be Libeskind, who has never designed a skyscraper.

As far as the final design goes, we will probably hear a lot of details about the tower before the rendering is released Dec 15th. Probably the same as when details came out before that last rounds of proposals were released last December.

[Agglomeration]

Pataki's long since lost my vote. I'm certain that he's forcing the "Freedom Tower" down people's throats simply for political points. Seriously though I'm sick of major skyscraper projects such as this one being directed from bureaucrat-plagued Albany.

Does Robert Moses (and the dictatorial methods he used to help demolish the old Penn Station) ring a bell? In the case of Lower Manhattan it does with me. Something about this process needs to change.

[ZippyTheChimp]

I'm gagging. :roll:

[NYguy]

David Childs presented his tower designs in a meeting to Mr. Libeskind. Mr. Libeskind, by all accounts, was disappointed. The asymmetry in the design was not obvious from many vantage points elsewhere on the site. The twisting tower did not remain flush on its western face with the western slurry wall of Ground Zero. And the shape of the top was symmetrical looking—a vast square lattice-work crown incorporating four television antennae.


A crown incorporating four television antennae sounds more interesting than Libeskind's puny spire, and calls to mind the cancelled 7 South Dearborn tower in Chicago (3 antennae instead of 4). It would also allow for a "presence in the sky" as Childs says, more than Libeskinds spire and single antenna would.

I'm convinced the outcome of the final design (antenna) will be based more on the television broadcasters' needs than Libeskind's desires. They are paying for the construction of the antenna, which is also the only reason for the extended height of the structure.


http://www.som.com/resources/projects/1/1/8/7_south_from_above_website_310.jpg

[fluffypolly]

as odd as this sounds, i think childs will suprise us with a awesome building, that will totally show up libeskinds toothpick. dont get me wrong its a nice looking toothpick, but it just doesnt look right at the world trade center, maybe it can be built in the far midtown plan. i think childs may be holding back, becuase if childs' plan was so ugly then why did libeskind dramatically alter his building plan. i think childs might possibly be on to something b/c latticework wouldnt look right with a observation deck above it so maybe the lattice will be above the obdeck incorporated with the antennaes. after all they did say there was going to be a ob deck at 1776 feet. and the rest of the building up to atleast 2100 feet maybe more

[JMGarcia]

Only time will tell if Childs' building is more impressive than Libeskinds current vision.

It seems to me that Childs' version is much more likely to have the office space and thus the enclosed space stop lower than Libeskind's. Therefore, it all depends on Childs' spire. It may be a large lattice work like THINK's WCC with an observation deck embedded in it.

But, from what Childs' has said, it tapers. It is very possible it could end up a thin lattice work like these buildings in Melbourne in wich case Libeskind's design wins hands down by not only having a higher occuppied area but also a more impressive spire.

http://www.skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?4086656

If, on the other hand, Childs' keeps the lattice work roughly the width of the building much higher up he could indeed have a winner.

[fluffypolly]

i agree, but i dont thinlk childs and silverstine are dumb enough to build something like that at the world trade center. as far we know it childs has to propose the the most impressive structure because his career as an architect can be at stake. btw didnt he say that the actual building tapers into a laticcework/antennae combo

[JMGarcia]

Tapers means "gets thinner" not to be confused with morph or dissolves as in "morphs (or dissolves) into a lattice work/antenna".

[NYguy]

Only time will tell if Childs' building is more impressive than Libeskinds current vision.

It seems to me that Childs' version is much more likely to have the office space and thus the enclosed space stop lower than Libeskind's. Therefore, it all depends on Childs' spire. It may be a large lattice work like THINK's WCC with an observation deck embedded in it..

I'm already convinced Childs has the more impressive tower. I don't care about the office space, because neither will reach 110 stories (and Silverstein likely won't build higher than 70 anyway).

But Libeskind's garden/spire will basically be a sharp lattice work point at the top, supporting one mass antenna. It will be thinner than Childs' design mainly because Libeskind wants to keep the "raised torch" effect of is tower. His garden/spire is mainly the "raised arm", which is why Childs' design doesn't work for him. Child's tower on the other hand is massive enough at the top to include the multiple antennas and is likely the reason there was a deck proposed at 1,776 ft. Libeskind's tower will top out at that height, and will hardly offer enough room at that point.

But the biggest issue with the two designs is basically that the needs of the tower have changed since Libeskind first came up with his concept - the building was going to basically be a spire. When the broadcasters signed on, that changed things a lot. It is now as much a broadcasters tower as it is a skyscraper. That says a lot about what the top of the tower will look like. Libeskind's puny spire won't be sufficient as is.


http://www.pbase.com/image/22741075/medium.jpg

[JMC]

Any structural engeneers on here, who could tell us how big the top of the tower would need to be, to support those 3 or 4 antennae?

[NYguy]

It probably wouldn't have to be huge, but it would be larger than Libeskind's spire (unless Libeskind's design was altered, something he himself won't do)...

[JMGarcia]

Time will tell but waiting's a bitch. ;)

[NYatKNIGHT]

I wonder how much input the Broadcasters have over the location of the observation deck - remember they wanted no part of it in the Bayonne tower.

[NYguy]

I wonder how much input the Broadcasters have over the location of the observation deck - remember they wanted no part of it in the Bayonne tower.

I remembered that as well, but I guess they had to make some concessions about that. The height of 1,776 ft has to be made significant in some way, especially if they insist on calling it the 1776 Freedom Tower...

[NYguy]

quote from Downtown Express...


Developer Larry Silverstein, who owns the W.T.C. leasing rights and brought Childs into the project, said last week the tower will retain the symbolic height proposed by Libeskind: “1776 is where its going to be.”

[JMGarcia]

It should be clear by now that not all of Larry's pronouncements necessarily come to pass. What height is he talking about anyway? Antenna? Sturctural? Roof?

[Agglomeration]

In short, if that rendering is built, we may end up with a rehash of the original WTC North Tower. You know, the one with the 350-foot broadcasting antenna on top. So I believe the concept of the "Freedom Tower" isn't new at all.

[NYguy]

It should be clear by now that not all of Larry's pronouncements necessarily come to pass. What height is he talking about anyway? Antenna? Sturctural? Roof?

Who knows. Everyone involved in the rebuilding so far have been cryptic in their remarks. I believe its deliberate. Most likely though, the antenna height will be at least 2,000 ft.

[NYguy]

Libeskind's "statue of liberty" tower...



The two sides agreed that their joint design would have to somehow mark the 1,776-foot height that was a selling point of Mr. Libeskind’s original site design; that the "spiral feature" of the design should be preserved; that the Freedom Tower ought to read in some way as asymmetrical; and that the shape of the building would in some way reference the Statue of Liberty, as in Mr. Libeskind’s original design. But both sides already believed their separate designs for towers achieved those objectives.


http://www.pbase.com/image/23122699/large.jpg


I wonder what Childs' take on the "statue" looked like....

[JMGarcia]

Just flatten off the tower at a lower height a put the side spire own top with as twisting lattice work. ;)

[NYguy]

Just flatten off the tower at a lower height a put the side spire own top with as twisting lattice work. ;)


Hmm...the twisting lattice work could be the gown....

[JMGarcia]

A tall order
Can architects team up on ground zero skyscraper?

By Blair Kamin
Tribune architecture critic
Published November 9, 2003

NEW YORK -- Architect Daniel Libeskind says the height of his proposed 1,776-foot-tall tower at ground zero celebrates the year of the Declaration of Independence. So now that New York Gov. George Pataki has told Libeskind and architect David Childs that they have until Dec. 15 to resolve their very public differences about the skyscraper, it's a good time to recall what Benjamin Franklin told his fellow revolutionaries in 1776: "We must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."

Franklin's quip came to mind after a brief visit to ground zero on Oct. 30, the day that Pataki declared at a business luncheon that those involved in the rebuilding must "place the public's interest above self-interest." Libeskind and Childs were sitting side by side in the audience, so the governor's "stop-your-squabbling" message couldn't have been lost on them.

Libeskind continues to press for the design he sketched in his competition-winning master plan -- an asymmetrical tower roughly 70 stories tall, with a slender spire that would echo the upraised arm of the Statue of Liberty and culminate an upward spiral of a group of slice-topped office buildings. Childs, who heads the New York office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, wants a more monolithic form -- a muscular tower that twists as it rises, topped by a latticelike crown that includes antennas. His design, however, has not been made public.

Can the two architects compromise without compromising the form -- and thus, the meaning -- of Libeskind's brilliant ground zero vision?

Symbolic tower

The so-called Freedom Tower is as much a part of Libeskind's plan as the below-ground memorial site that will reveal the damlike slurry wall that prevented the nearby Hudson River from flooding the site after the twin towers collapsed. (The wall would suggest democracy's resilience, Libeskind has said.)

The Freedom Tower would strike up a powerful conversation with the Statue of Liberty and its raised torch. Though there is room for improvement (the off-center spire can be better integrated into the overall composition of the skyscraper), the Freedom Tower would be a striking reconstitution of the lower Manhattan skyline, one that optimistically scrapes the sky instead of marking it with a skeletal, downbeat void. Its genius is the way it draws the entire landscape -- the Statue of Liberty, the harbor, the skyline -- into a powerful symbolic whole.

The rub is that Libeskind is not the lead architect for Freedom Tower. Childs is, designated for that role by developer Larry Silverstein, who holds the lease for the Trade Center and who is likely to control at least $3.5 billion in rebuilding funds once his insurers pay him for the damages caused by the terrorist attacks. Libeskind is supposed to "collaborate" on the project, an ill-defined role he was granted to ensure that Childs' skyscraper is consistent with his plan.

I visited both architects on the morning before Pataki's speech (their lower Manhattan offices are just blocks apart), and though neither would speak on the record, I was struck by the enormity of the challenge they face -- plus their considerable personal differences.

Childs is the quintessential corporate architect. He is soft-spoken but steel-willed; not a star with a singular style but a highly respected pragmatist and urbanist. His best design, still unbuilt, would re-create the grandeur of the old Pennsylvania Station by inserting an enormous metal and glass crescent between two wings of a Beaux-Arts post office building here. His twin-towered Time Warner Center, a glassy multiuse complex that evokes the gracious Art Deco residential towers along Central Park, is nearing completion at the park's southwest corner. If there is a knock against him, it is that he hasn't done a great building yet. Indeed, though Childs distanced himself from it, Skidmore's ground zero plan, which called for a forest of nine flat-topped towers, was a flop.

Libeskind, on the other hand, personifies the celebrity, avant-garde "starchitect." His signature look -- the designer black glasses, the elfin smile, the shock of gray hair -- is as distinctive as his angular, shardlike buildings. He talks as fast as he seems to think, which is supersonic. He's a poet who infuses abstract, modern forms with deep emotional resonance. Seen from the air, for example, his Jewish Museum Berlin resembles a fractured Star of David, powerfully suggesting the brutal impact of Hitler's death camps. But he's never completed a skyscraper, and learning the ropes on the world's tallest office building, which the Freedom Tower could be, is a stretch.

Is cooperation possible?

Maybe Childs and Libeskind need each other. Maybe they can work together, as three architectural firms did in the 1930s to create this city's greatest complex of office and cultural buildings, Rockefeller Center. But maybe that's just wishful thinking.

There is a growing conviction at Skidmore, which has designed numerous supertall skyscrapers, that Libeskind's design is more a piece of sculpture than a work of architecture. Critics there say it doesn't make sense, structurally or financially, because an enormous amount of internal structural steel would be required to prevent the wind from breaking off the asymmetrical spire.

Yet Libeskind's backers respond that the design can be made practical and cost-effective. And there is reason to think they may be right, based on the precedent of I.M. Pei's Bank of China tower of 1990, which has its own elegant asymmetrical profile as it soars above downtown Hong Kong.

The 1,209-foot tower relies on an internal three-dimension frame, called a space truss, to brace the building against typhoons. Perhaps its big-boned, cross-braced design provides a conceptual model for synthesizing Child's push for logical, internal structure with Libeskind's drive for emotional, external symbolism.

Steps toward collaboration

Whatever route they take toward a resolution, Libeskind and Childs need to make three key first steps:

Libeskind must recall that his master plan is a vision, not a blueprint, and that his outline for the Freedom Tower is simply that -- an outline. As Frank Gehry's stunning new Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles shows, conceptual designs often get better when they are subjected to the realities of structure and program.

Childs should remember that his design for Freedom Tower cannot start from a blank slate, but must begin with the critical features of Libeskind's plan. That plan was stamped with a democratic imprimatur when Pataki selected it after a heated public debate. Childs and Silverstein are embarking on a fool's errand if they seek to usurp that mandate.

Both architects surely realize that the Freedom Tower will define -- for better or worse -- one of the world's great skylines and America's creative response to one of the most challenging episodes in its history. So the architects need to check their skyscraper-size egos at the door, find common ground and build their collaboration from there.

Pataki's Oct. 30 order to the architects to end their duel came against a backdrop of progress at and around ground zero. Childs' 7 World Trade Center office building is rising just to the north. A rebuilt transit tube burrows across the site. A temporary commuter rail station will open Nov. 23. The sense of shock and despair, once so palpable at ground zero, is gone. It feels less like an open sore than a construction site, a place of possibility.

But if the architects don't hang together, it also could be a place where an extraordinary opportunity is lost.


Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune

[NYguy]

Childs should remember that his design for Freedom Tower cannot start from a blank slate, but must begin with the critical features of Libeskind's plan. That plan was stamped with a democratic imprimatur when Pataki selected it after a heated public debate. Childs and Silverstein are embarking on a fool's errand if they seek to usurp that mandate.

LOL...even at least one LMDC member questions the use of the word "mandate", which the Libeskind plan has NEVER had...rather it was a plan selected by Pataki, lest anyone be fooled....I know I'm not....

[JMGarcia]

Pataki definitely chose it. IMO, it is impossible for any plan to have a mandate. There are simply too many conflicting opinions.

Its interesting though how many casual observers really do believe that the public chose Libeskind. Aaah the power of disinformation in the press - perception is reality.

[Jasonik]

That plan was stamped with a democratic imprimatur when Pataki selected it

Isn't Pataki a Republican? :wink:

[NYguy]

NEWDAY...

Seymour: Money Enough For Freedom Tower

By Graham Rayman
November 13, 2003

Port Authority chairman Joseph Seymour said Thursday that even with the raging court battle, there are already enough insurance proceeds to build Gov. George Pataki's proposed 2.5 million-square-foot Freedom Tower.

Whether there is enough money to build everything else on a long-list of lower Manhattan projects as well as planned regional transportation projects is another question.

Seymour appeared to suggest there is currently not enough money for serious consideration of an Airtrain link from lower Manhattan to Kennedy Airport, noting that the project would cost $3 billion to $4 billion.

Of the $4.55 billion allotted to lower Manhattan transit projects, $2 billion is reserved for the transit hub, $860 million for the West Street tunnel, and the rest for renovations at the Fulton Street and South Ferry stations.

Seymour said a design for the first new tower on the Trade Center site is expected Dec. 15; he said a preliminary rendering the new transit hub is expected in the spring.

World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein is still embroiled in a court battle with his insurers. Asked to respond to concerns that Silverstein won't get enough insurance money to rebuild out of his litigation, Seymour offered an indirect answer. "We have an obligation to provide 10 million square feet," he said, speaking at a Crain's Business breakfast at the Hilton in midtown. "There is no question in my mind that with insurance proceeds and the federal dollars for the infrastructure, we can rebuild the development," he said.

He said buying out the $563 million GMAC loan to Silverstein remains under negotiation. And he left the door slightly open for the Port Authority to take space in Silverstein's 7 World Trade Center. He even joked that it seemed he and Silverstein are "joined at the hip."

On Nov. 23, PATH train service will reopen at the site, Seymour said.

[Kris]

November 16, 2003

Scenes From a Forced Marriage

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/11/16/arts/DUNL.450.jpg
Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum, left, and David M. Childs's Time Warner Center: meshing styles, personalities and bosses to design a tower for ground zero.

At least no one has pulled a knife.

The roily architectural union of Daniel Libeskind and David M. Childs — officials describe it wishfully as a collaboration but Mr. Libeskind likens it to a forced marriage — has already secured a place in the annals of contentious architectural alliances. Tables have been pounded, disparaging innuendoes whispered. The imbroglio earned a public admonition from Gov. George E. Pataki, who gave the sparring architects until Dec. 15 to agree on a design for the Freedom Tower, the pinnacle of the new World Trade Center.

But in historical terms, Mr. Childs and Mr. Libeskind have been acting like perfect gentlemen. For instance, neither has shown his displeasure quite as viscerally as Eero Saarinen did in 1958, while he and five other architects struggled over Lincoln Center. One day, to express his concern about the appearance of Philip Johnson's ballet theater, Saarinen took a palette knife to a clay model of the building and simply slashed off the projecting stage house.

The absence of knife play over the Freedom Tower does not guarantee that the intended partnership will run smoothly. A meeting between the architects last Monday was described as positive by both sides. History, however, suggests that the turmoil will continue. There is a long tradition, in New York, of architectural bargaining and bickering that has produced gems like Rockefeller Center, duds (let's be honest now) like the World Trade Center and compromises like Lincoln Center and the United Nations.

Not only is the record a rancorous one, but Mr. Libeskind and Mr. Childs are navigating challenges unlike any faced by their predecessors as they deal simultaneously with the most emotionally charged acreage in America, under daunting deadlines, for different clients, with few guideposts to define their roles. Much has been made of the contrast in personalities and portfolios between Mr. Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the tall and courtly insider from Westchester County, via Washington, perhaps best known for the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle; and Mr. Libeskind, the compact and voluble iconoclast from Poland, via the Bronx, who captured the world's attention with the Jewish Museum in Berlin. But this is far less important than the fact that Mr. Childs is working for a developer, Larry A. Silverstein, while Mr. Libeskind is working, through state agencies, for the governor.

"What's different about Freedom Tower is not that it involves a collaboration, even a collaboration of two star architects," said Prof. Hilary Ballon, chairwoman of the art history and archaeology department at Columbia University, "but rather it involves two masters, and it hasn't been clearly established who's in charge."

The most successful collaborations seem to have been those in which the participants had a precisely defined role. It also helped if there was someone in the room, or waiting in the next room, with the power to knock heads together when necessary.

Rockefeller Center

In the 1930's, John D. Rockefeller Jr. played that part at Rockefeller Center. Though John R. Todd managed the project and hired its architects, there was never any doubt as to who was actually in charge.

"The architects cooperated on Rockefeller Center not because they wanted to but because they were paid by Mr. Rockefeller," said Wallace K. Harrison, one of the team of eight. Chief among that group was Raymond M. Hood, the ideas man, who was then enjoying the spotlight with his American Radiator Building and Daily News Building. Reinhard & Hofmeister were the office specialists. Harvey Wiley Corbett was tapped in part for "his ability to translate architectural terminology into ripe and impressive statements that could be dangled before the press and potential tenants," Daniel Okrent wrote in "Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center" (Viking, 2003).

Because all of the architects were involved in each of the center's buildings, it was "imperative that they eventually reach agreement" on the design, Victoria Newhouse wrote in "Wallace K. Harrison, Architect" (Rizzoli International Publications, 1989). In that sense, Rockefeller Center can be seen either as one of the first big instances of architecture-by-committee or a case of genuine collaboration. "People are always asking who designed Rockefeller Center," Harrison said. "Each of us answers, `I did.' "

The United Nations

At the United Nations, by contrast, Le Corbusier wound up saying, "I didn't." Representing France on an international design board that was convened in 1947 and headed by Harrison, the temperamental Le Corbusier quickly showed his contempt for the process during a meeting in which "he tore every scheme except his own from the boardroom walls in an extraordinary fit of rage and frustration," Ms. Newhouse wrote.

Though Le Corbusier is credited with the slender and spatially isolated Secretariat, he was so disturbed by alterations to the plan that he publicly disavowed the attribution, saying he had been "stripped of all his rights, without conscience and without pity." He also lost his fights with Harrison, who insisted on reducing the horizontal area of the Conference Building by putting it on two levels and on forgoing the use of overhanging sun screens on the facade of the Secretariat.

Harrison's victories came at a high cost, as he recounted when describing the decision-making process at the design board: "We got up to the last minute and ran into a dead end. One half believed in one thing and one half in another thing. I took the bull by the horns and made the decision. `You'll hate me for this,' I said, and I was right. Le Corbusier hasn't spoken to me since."

Lincoln Center

"This time I have refused to take that position," Harrison said in 1959, as he approached the design of Lincoln Center with five other architects. "I won't go through that damn thing again. It put me in the hospital for six months."

But if peace wasn't achieved at the United Nations, why expect it at an arts center? While Harrison was working on the Metropolitan Opera House, his partner, Max Abramovitz, was working on Philharmonic Hall. Across the plaza, Mr. Johnson was designing the New York State Theater. The knife-wielding Saarinen was responsible for the Vivian Beaumont Theater, Pietro Belluschi for the Juilliard School and Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill for the Library and Museum of the Performing Arts.

"Each architect was responsible only for his own part of the complex; each jealously guarded his autonomy, yet wanted a say in his neighbor's work," Ms. Newhouse wrote. "The situation encouraged the most negative kind of competitiveness."

And it produced a complex that — despite its undeniable midcentury modernist charm — turned out far less sophisticated and successful than it might have been. "Some participants in the development of Lincoln Center attribute the problems to the weak role of Harrison, who refused to act as a strong leader, as he had done in other projects," Professor Ballon said. "It takes a leader and a clear vision to make a collaboration work."

The World Trade Center

Austin J. Tobin, the executive director of the Port Authority, was just that person in the original trade center project, with Nelson and David Rockefeller both in the background. And the vision was unambiguously enunciated by Guy F. Tozzoli, head of the authority's world trade department, when he told the reluctant architect, Minoru Yamasaki, in 1962: "President Kennedy is going to put a man on the moon. You're going to figure out a way to build me the tallest buildings in the world."

The trouble was that Yamasaki had never built any more of a skyscraper than the 30-story Michigan Consolidated Gas Building in Detroit. Someone was needed "who knew the ins and outs of New York building codes and union rules," with a shop large and experienced enough "to do the drafting of the thousands of pages of detailed construction documents," James Glanz and Eric Lipton of The New York Times wrote in "City in the Sky: The Rise and Fall of the World Trade Center" (Times Books, 2003).

That firm was Emery Roth & Sons. The collaboration turned out so congenially, Richard Roth Jr. said, that Yamasaki and the Roths later joined voluntarily to work on a project for the Defense Department in Washington, though it was unbuilt.

Ground Zero

The new World Trade Center already has a half dozen prominent architects associated with it in one way or another. Besides Mr. Libeskind and Mr. Childs, Santiago Calatrava, Norman Foster, Fumihiko Maki and Jean Nouvel have all been tapped. More players will emerge Wednesday when prospective memorial designs go on display in the Winter Garden at Battery Park City.

And in a month, the world will see the result of the new round of designs for the Freedom Tower by Studio Daniel Libeskind and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. If they succeed, they will have overcome considerable odds. "The conflict between Libeskind and Childs reproduces the conflict between Pataki, who wants an iconic tower to echo the asymmetric salute of the Statue of Liberty, and Silverstein, who wants to maximize rentable floor space," Professor Ballon said. "It makes sense for Libeskind and Childs to hold their ground until it's resolved who's in charge of Freedom Tower: the governor or the developer. Their power struggle is being displaced onto the architects. The idea that the architects can resolve their differences through a bargaining process, as if this were a labor negotiation, is misguided."

Mr. Libeskind is actually working both for Silverstein Properties on the Freedom Tower and, in his overarching role as master site planner, for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

To complicate matters further, Studio Daniel Libeskind and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill were briefly competitors. They were both named in December 2002 to propose a master plan for the site. Skidmore, serving as an umbrella for a loose collaborative of architects and artists, dropped out a month later to work exclusively for Silverstein Properties. In February 2003, Mr. Libeskind was awarded the planning contract. His plan came complete with a 1,776-foot skyscraper that Mr. Pataki called the Freedom Tower.

Despite Mr. Silverstein's public endorsement of the plan, he wanted little to do with Mr. Libeskind's particular tower design, in part because Mr. Libeskind — shades of Yamasaki — had never before built a skyscraper. So he gave the job to Mr. Childs, saying that "whatever is done here will clearly involve Dan as part of a peer group to ensure the quality of the design."

An effort to clarify matters in July resulted in the designation of Skidmore as "design architect and project manager, leading a project team that will design the tower." Studio Daniel Libeskind, already the "master plan architect" for the trade center, would be "collaborating architect during the concept and schematic design phases" and a "full member of the project team" working on Freedom Tower. Got that?

They didn't.

As Mr. Childs interprets it, he is the lead architect — more than just first among equals — responsible for a coherent and original design of his own that reflects Mr. Libeskind's plan but is not dictated by it. In this view, Mr. Libeskind is not so much a collaborator as a commentator who can critique the Skidmore design without unilaterally altering it. (The public has no role to play; Mr. Childs's design is secret.)

Mr. Libeskind, meanwhile, regards his concept for the Freedom Tower as integral to the overall vision of the trade center site, one that has been endorsed and embraced by the public. As such, he had insisted that it should be the basic framework on which Skidmore makes refinements, though he now may be willing to split the difference by allowing Skidmore to morph the design with that drawn up by Mr. Childs.

When Governor Pataki gave them their deadline last month, he effectively told the architects that, from now on, he was their client. And he invited them to feats of greatness by summoning the collaboration between Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson on the Seagram Building. Yet the governor stopped shy of saying who should play Mies, the undisputed creative force, and who should play Mr. Johnson, whose role at Seagram was vital but subsidiary.

Until someone makes that distinction more explicit, Mr. Childs and Mr. Libeskind may continue to struggle. But given clearly defined roles, Mr. Roth said, almost anything is possible. He recalled producing the construction drawings for the Portland Public Services Building of 1982 in Portland, Ore., by Michael Graves. "I was never a fan of post-modernism and therefore, the building didn't appeal to me," Mr. Roth allowed. "But we did the best job we could to make Michael's design work."

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/11/16/arts/DUNL.184.2.650.jpg
The Lincoln Center team, from left, Edward Mathews, Philip Johnson, Jo Mielziner, John D. Rockefeller 3rd, Wallace K. Harrison, Eero Saarinen, Gordon Bunshaft, Max Abramovitz and Pietro Belluschi.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

November 16, 2003

Who's Co-Designing What for Co-Whom?

By JULIE V. IOVINE

Though the ground zero matchup between David M. Childs and Daniel Libeskind is the highest-profile example, more than a few major collaborative architectural efforts are now under way in Manhattan. On West 53rd Street, Yoshio Taniguchi, the exacting Japanese modernist, is paired with the corporate workhorse firm Kohn Pedersen Fox on the expansion of the Museum of Modern Art. Nearing completion at Columbus Circle, the Time Warner Center by Mr. Childs contains Rafael Viñoly's performance spaces for Jazz at Lincoln Center, nestled inside like a marshmallow chick embedded within a chocolate egg. More recently, in a current competition for a new building at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Art and Science, Zaha Hadid, the London architect known for explosively fragmented forms, has matched up with Beyer Blinder Belle, a firm whose name has become synonymous with underachieving since its plans for ground zero were rejected by the public.

As collaborations become so much a part of business as usual, architects are struggling to figure out terms of engagement that they can live with. At the Museum of Modern Art, the setup is fairly standard: famous out-of-town architect is attached to local stalwart who will see the job through. Mr. Taniguchi said by e-mail that he would have preferred being the sole architect. And Kohn Pedersen Fox does not normally see itself as second fiddle.

"For collaborations to work it is mandatory that one party work in support of the other and not compete," William Pedersen, a firm partner, said. "And so when we were asked to take on the assignment by MoMA, it raised questions in our mind. We are design architects, not production architects." They settled for "executive architect," a relatively new title that lends verbal dignity to a position somewhere between the starring role of design architect and the facilitators, known as the architects of record.

According to Robert Ivy, the editor in chief of Architectural Record, the title has come into currency recently and reflects a change in the way architects do business. "It is not just a euphemism," he said, adding that while "architect of record" implied a subservient role to the so-called design architect, "executive architect suggests an active, informed daily presence" that might include contributing to the design.

For The New York Times building on Eighth Avenue, Renzo Piano, based in Europe, is the design architect and Fox & Fowle of New York are calling themselves the co-architects, according to a spokesperson there. To confuse matters more, design publications usually refer to them as the executive architects, and sometimes name one, sometimes the other when referring to the architect of the building. The array of titles on the job, Mr. Ivy admitted, "is beginning to sound like a menu."

Not surprisingly, these partnerships are often awkward and fraught with tension. To Mr. Viñoly, the Manhattan architect, the prospect of having to collaborate on a single building with another ambitious architect would be, he said, akin to "asking two surgeons to share the scalpel when operating on a patient."

Mr. Viñoly, of course, was a member of the Think team, the group of architects — ranging from Frederic Schwartz of Manhattan to Shigeru Ban of Tokyo — whose design lost out to Mr. Libeskind's in the final stages of the ground zero competition. Even so, Mr. Viñoly said, he'd rather "go back to playing the piano" than share responsibility as executive architect.

Mr. Viñoly runs an office of 170 people. Size is part of his strategy to avoid undesirable collaborations, even on large-scale projects. While it no doubt takes many players to get anything built, Mr. Viñoly said that "working with other people is harder than anything else in the world and top-heavy collaborations are a recipe for disaster."

The real problem, he said, is that all too often developers opt for collaborations when they can't make up their minds about what they really want. He described the performance spaces for Jazz at Lincoln Center at Columbus Circle not as a collaboration but as a building nested within a building — a situation that was forced on the project by Rudolph Giuliani, then mayor of New York, to provide the corporate behemoth with a public amenity.

Downtown, the 2001 collaboration of Prada's star architects — Rem Koolhaas and Herzog & deMeuron — on a boutique hotel for the impresario Ian Schrager in the East Village was an instant media sensation. But the design never went beyond the widely printed image of a tattooed obelisk.

Jacques Herzog of the Swiss team Herzog & deMeuron said that his firm generally preferred joining forces with artists, rather than architects, so that "the client knows who is the boss." Still, he would welcome the chance to do it all over again with Mr. Koolhaas because he is on the "same level intellectually and artistically."

There is no architecture without collaboration, said Mr. Koolhaas, the Dutch architect who is a guru to an entire generation of intellectually aspiring architects, not to mention research assistants. Mr. Koolhaas, who is known to fly into imperious rages over artistic integrity, added that of course it works only if the partners involved are aesthetic equals as well. Mr. Koolhaas attributed the hotel collaboration's ultimate failure not to the economy, as was suggested at the time, nor to a rumored falling out with Mr. Schrager.

Instead, Mr. Koolhaas said, "Perhaps having the two of us together in one room was too overwhelming for the client."


Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

[NYguy]

NY Times...


Mr. Libeskind, meanwhile, regards his concept for the Freedom Tower as integral to the overall vision of the trade center site, one that has been endorsed and embraced by the public. As such, he had insisted that it should be the basic framework on which Skidmore makes refinements, though he now may be willing to split the difference by allowing Skidmore to morph the design with that drawn up by Mr. Childs.

What - no more statue of liberty?

[matt3303]

"one that has been endorsed and embraced by the public"
---------------------------------------------------------------------

:roll:

Oh, please. Everyone I know thinks Libeskind's design is a huge waste of public money, not to mention bad architecture.

[Freedom Tower]

Well I wouldn't go so far as to say "Bad Architecture", I wouldn't call it "Great" like it should be for the World Trade Center, but its not bad. Although the quote is misleading, since Foster's design was far more popular.

[Kris]

November 23, 2003

CITY LORE

A Camel in the Sky?

By NEAL BASCOMB

Over two years ago, the New York skyline lost some of its soul in the destruction of the World Trade Towers. To see the city without those towers is to see a stranger.

But there is cause for hope in the efforts to build a new downtown, particularly with the Freedom Tower, envisioned as the heart of a new World Trade Center. If those charged with its design and construction can find a way to create a truly remarkable structure, they will have given the city a gift that far surpasses any psychic repair. Yet what is officially a collaborative effort has struck many people as more of a brawl, so much so that Gov. George E. Pataki has set a deadline of Dec. 15 for the warring architects Daniel Libeskind and David M. Childs to agree on a design.

Will the Freedom Tower benefit most from being decided by committee or by a few individuals holding true to their visions? In a look back at the past century of skyscraper development, it becomes powerfully clear that building by committee was not the route by which the city's greatest structures came to define the skyline.

In fact, if it hadn't been for a few brave souls believing otherwise, New York might never have had skyscrapers in the first place. After the opening of the headquarters of The New York World, a building 309 feet tall, on Park Row in 1890, an architect named Harvey Wiley Corbett commented: "Architects said nothing would be higher; engineers said nothing could be higher; city planners said nothing should be higher; and owners said nothing higher would pay."

These assorted groups were quickly proved wrong as the city moved into the 20th century, particularly as skyscrapers became a way for their owners to make their pre-eminence known. And few owners had more to say than Frank Woolworth, the five-and-dime king. He financed his skyscraper out of his own pocket to ensure he answered to no one in constructing his tower. His builder pleaded with this modern Croesus to consider the return on investment. But when the architect, Cass Gilbert, asked him how high to design his skyscraper, Woolworth replied, "How high can you make it?"

Gilbert answered, "It is for you to make the limit.'' At the time the Metropolitan Life Insurance tower was the city's tallest building at 700 feet. Woolworth gave his architect one order: make it higher than the Metropolitan tower.

At 792 feet tall, the resulting structure was the world's biggest advertisement. Beyond the height requirement, Gilbert was given the freedom to exercise his many talents in the design of this Cathedral of Commerce, producing a skyscraper that was not only the world's tallest, but also a statement in elegance with its soaring tower and terra-cotta facade.

In 1929, the automobile innovator Walter Chrysler set out to steal the height crown from Woolworth. This was the zenith of the Roaring Twenties, a decade when anything and everything seemed possible. Moreover, Chrysler's architect, William Van Alen, was an individualist and a maverick. Upon his return from studying in Paris, Van Alen announced: "No old stuff for me! No bestial copyings of arches and columns and cornices! Me, I'm new! Avanti!"

For Van Alen, designing a tall building was the easy part. He wanted to express the spirit of the times in steel and stone. He put aside convention and designed a shimmering tower with a spire that seemed to pierce the clouds at 1,046 feet high.

There was nothing timid in his plans, an approach that earned him the ire of the public and architectural establishment. The Chrysler Building was excoriated as a "stunt design," and some people hoped that all that exposed steel was merely "temporary construction." But Van Alen and Chrysler understood the power of standing out by pushing the boundaries of design. They consulted only with one another, muting all other voices. The enduring influence of their building is a result.

Their rival at the time in the battle to the build the world's tallest skyscraper was the Manhattan Company Building on 40 Wall Street. The execution of the design was a contrast to the lone-owner-and-architect collaborations of the Chrysler and Woolworth Buildings; in fact, it was a classic case of decision by committee. The cast included the banker and developer George Ohrstrom, Manhattan Company board members and the builders William and Paul Starrett. Each had his own architect who weighed in on the project. Decisions on height and design passed through this committee.

THEIR result was a doleful compromise toward the middle. The Manhattan Company Building neither won the height race (it topped out at 925 feet) nor managed much of an impact in its design (a French Gothic spinoff with a copper pyramidal crown). Although it is the city's fourth-tallest building, one would be hard pressed to find many people who could point it out.

The Empire State Building could have suffered a similar fate of anonymity if not for one powerful figure: John Jacob Raskob. The shadow of the Great Depression was advancing on New York in 1929, and there were many pitfalls during the Empire State's construction. Not the least of its challenges was a team of architects and moneyed interests on the board, each with his own idea of what should rise on the site of the former Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

But the Empire State's leader, Raskob, a publicity-shy man who had helped create the giant that was General Motors, navigated these pitfalls by making it clear he was in charge. He silenced calls to back down from his ambitious plans, despite a real estate market plunging toward disaster.

His monumental skyscraper was to be a symbol of what the poor could achieve in America, and he wanted this symbol represented by an eye-catching, original design. To achieve this, he clearly managed the reins of control.

He appointed William Lamb, an architect in whose abilities he had great faith, to be responsible for the design. As for the final word on the form and scale of the building that would rise on 34th Street and Fifth Avenue, this was for Raskob alone to declare. This business titan who signed his letters "John J. Raskob, Capitalist" knew that decision by committee would result only in tepid solutions. He understood better than most the words of the great Chicago architect Daniel Burnham: "Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized."

The rebuilding efforts downtown face an infinitely more complex set of circumstances than these skyscrapers of the past. In a sense, we all own a piece of what is to be constructed in the place of the World Trade Center. But if history reveals anything, it is that an awe-inspiring design is a result of a few individuals standing up and following their own course.

The New York City skyline is punctuated by boldness. The architects who imagined these towers, and the owners who realized them, had to contend with jealous rivals, architectural critics, skeptical financiers, contrarian board members and wary public officials to see their structures stand. Only the most stalwart held to their visions, in both height and style.

Their legacies are the landmarks that define this city, both to those who live here and those who dream of coming. To see such structures as the Woolworth Building, the Chrysler Building or the Empire State Building is to see New York itself.

Neal Bascomb is the author of "Higher: A Historic Race to the Sky and the Making of a City,'' published last month by Doubleday.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

Two Architects Whip Up Tower In Mad Frenzy

by Blair Golson

The signature tower of the rebuilt World Trade Center is taking shape, and not a moment too soon. With scant three weeks left, the two architectural teams working together on the tower—one led by World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein’s architect David Childs, the other by Ground Zero master planner Daniel Libeskind—have been engaged in intense, seven-day-a-week meetings aimed at reconciling each side’s competing vision for the Freedom Tower, which is to be the tallest of five skyscrapers to rise from the ashes of Ground Zero.

Although many aspects of the proposed new tower are still in flux, several features are consistent to every recent draft rendering of the tower. Surviving from Mr. Libeskind’s original proposal is the asymmetrical shape of the tower, along with its narrow spire feature, both of which are meant to simulate the torchbearing arm of the Statue of Liberty seen from the harbor. Also surviving is the slanted roof that gives a spiraling sweep to the shape of the circle of the five skyscrapers, of descending height, called for in his master plan.

In a bow to Mr. Childs’ design, the building will most likely twist as it rises, although it’s not clear at this point when the building will right itself vertically, nor to what degree.

Other major considerations, like the height of the building, the materials to be used for the exterior, and other aesthetic and engineering questions, remain to be decided. But the major stumbling blocks seem to have been overcome, and both sides now say they’re confident they’ll be able to meet the Mr. Pataki’s Dec. 15 deadline.

They were off to a late start. After agreeing in July to a scheme that made Mr. Childs the lead architect for the building and Mr. Libeskind a "collaborator" on the project, each man spent weeks developing his own version of the tower without setting foot on common ground.

It wasn’t till a month ago, when Mr. Silverstein—under orders from development authorities—gave the two a blistering knuckle-rapping for refusing to work together, that the real work began.

"What essentially happened is that Childs and Libeskind abandoned their rigid adherence to their designs to try to come up with another building that incorporates the best of both," said Mr. Libeskind’s lawyer, Ed Hayes, who has seen early drafts of the new tower.

To be sure, it’s still an awkward union of dueling egos—what Mr. Libeskind referred to as a "forced marriage." But this marriage is almost full-term on what is hoped will be the world’s tallest building, with a due date of Dec. 15.

"At Larry Silverstein’s insistence and through a collaboration with Studio Daniel Libeskind, we are rapidly resolving these issues and will finalize a conceptual design by December 15th, thereby keeping to the Governor’s timetable," Mr. Childs told The Observer in an e-mail.

Rocky Marriage

Things weren’t looking so rosy a month ago. On Oct. 28, a furious Mr. Silverstein had a meeting with Mr. Childs, Mr. Libeskind and his wife, Nina Libeskind, in which the developer pounded the table and said: "There’s no more time for personal or design differences. We need to come together on a consensus design in a couple of weeks."

Headlines about the two sides’ competing visions for the Freedom Tower had been raging in the papers for the previous week. Mr. Silverstein was playing the role of mediator and motivator-in-chief because he had gained control of the Trade Center site in the summer of 2001, only a few weeks before terrorists destroyed the twin towers on Sept. 11. Mr. Libeskind entered the picture in February when Governor Pataki overrode the previously influential site-planning committee of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to annoint the Polish-born architect to design the site’s master plan.

Officially, Mr. Childs came on the scene on July 16, when Mr. Silverstein selected him to design the Freedom Tower. But from the very day of the Sept. 11 attack, the architects of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill—who were forced to flee their own downtown offices—had been working out designs, in their heads or on paper, for their client Mr. Silverstein. Moreover, the firm had already been Mr. Silverstein’s choice to upgrade the ground-level facilities at the complex, sprucing it up for potential renters. The relationship between the firm and the developer strengthened considerably in those days immediately following the attack.

From the beginning, the stage was set for strife. Both architects entered with enormous reputations and outsized egos, but it wasn’t clear who would be the last word on design matters for the Freedom Tower. According to an agreement that both men worked out in July, Mr. Childs was to be lead architect on the Freedom Tower; Mr. Libeskind was to collaborate, making sure that the building fit into the master plan. Mr. Libeskind, perhaps best known for his design of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, is an acclaimed designer of visionary structures that challenge the status quo, but he has little experience with erecting massive commercial projects. Mr. Childs, who recently completed the massive, twin-towered Time Warner Center, is a world-renowned leader of commercial projects, but critics complain that he makes too many aesthetic sacrifices to his clients.

The War Room

For the last month, the 23rd floor of S.O.M.’s headquarters at 14 Wall Street has been home to nearly 50 architects, engineers, designers and consultants who have been working on various aspects of the Freedom Tower. Four of the 50 are employees of Studio Daniel Libeskind (not including Daniel and Nina themselves). S.O.M. employs the rest, approximately 10 of whom are full-time, with the remainder being part-time specialty consultants.

The office floor is a huge white room with no divider, and almost every wall can be used as a pin-up board. Conferences take place in two smaller rooms off to the side. Days start at 8 in the morning and sometimes go well into the next morning.

"The atmosphere is intense. It’s professional work; it’s pros focusing on the tasks at hand on tight deadline constraints," said a member of the S.O.M team. "The theater you see in newspapers is absent in this room …. There are occasional strong differences of opinion, but this is a highly professional group."

A source within the Libeskind camp, however, said that as recently as the end of last week, tensions between the two sides were somewhat more apparent: Mr. Childs was characterized as stubborn in his desire to flout the design principles that form the basis of the Libeskind design.

It is a claim that sources in the Childs camp vigorously dispute, though off the record, there are no shortage of countercharges. Daniel and Nina Libeskind are currently traveling in Hong Kong and were unavailable for comment.

Regardless, the source in the Libeskind camp said that any such tensions evaporated over the course of several marathon meetings this weekend.

If the road to this consensus has been twisted and laden with pitfalls, it is in no small part due to the aggressive timetable that Mr. Pataki laid out for the two competing sides. The Governor badly wants construction to start before the Republican National Convention comes to town in August—and if that means banging heads together, so be it.

"The Governor has done everything but take family members as hostages to make sure that this project moves along," said Mr. Hayes, a longtime friend and adviser of Mr. Pataki’s. "Pataki is staking his whole place in history on this project. This is as large a historical project as anything in our history. The only one that compares is the rebuilding of Washington after the British burned it in 1812, at least in this country. Even the earthquake in San Francisco or the Chicago fire didn’t have the same public significance as this. In both those cases, they were basically just replacing what was there. This is something where they’re going to put in a whole new public infrastructure in a very important part of New York City in a very visible way."

You may reach Blair Golson via email at: bgolson@observer.com.

This column ran on page 1 in the 12/1/2003 edition of The New York Observer.

[NYguy]

From the observer article...


Although many aspects of the proposed new tower are still in flux, several features are consistent to every recent draft rendering of the tower.

Surviving from Mr. Libeskind’s original proposal is the asymmetrical shape of the tower, along with its narrow spire feature, both of which are meant to simulate the torchbearing arm of the Statue of Liberty seen from the harbor. Also surviving is the slanted roof that gives a spiraling sweep to the shape of the circle of the five skyscrapers, of descending height, called for in his master plan.

In a bow to Mr. Childs’ design, the building will most likely twist as it rises, although it’s not clear at this point when the building will right itself vertically, nor to what degree.

Oh well. There goes any hope of getting something more dominant on the site. New York will get is new statue of liberty after all. And that's what we really needed.

[NYguy]

NY TIMES...

Vision vs. Symbols and Politics at Ground Zero

By HERBERT MUSCHAMP
November 29, 2003

Although it failed to produce a work of genius, the competition to design a memorial to the victims of 9/11 was well worth undertaking. It threw into sharp relief three problems that have plagued the ground zero design process. Too much symbolism. Not enough time. A breakdown of cultural authority.

Until precise steps are taken to resolve all three issues, the design process will continue to sink deeper and deeper into political quicksand.

These issues are, of course, related. If the design process were not held hostage to the fast-track timetable approved by Gov. George E. Pataki, there would be less pressure to substitute symbolic manipulation for thought. If the timetable were not tied, however coincidentally, to the Republican National Convention to be held in New York in August, there would be less temptation to mistake politics for culture.

Something's got to give, and give soon. Otherwise, fiasco looms.

I give it about two weeks. Until Dec. 15, to be precise. That's the due date for a preliminary design of Freedom Tower, the first of the commercial skyscrapers scheduled to be built on the World Trade Center site.

And what rough corporate headquarters, its hour come round at last, slouches toward lower Manhattan to be born?

Much mirth was made in August, when it was announced that the design of Freedom Tower would be a collaboration between David M. Childs, of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and Daniel Libeskind, master planner of ground zero. How could two such conspicuously different architects possibly see eye to eye on the shape of a bedpost, much less the look of the tallest earthly construction yet raised by humankind?

Technically, Mr. Childs was given the upper hand. As "design" architect to Mr. Libeskind's "collaborating" architect, he has held theoretical power to veto his partner's suggestions. But it turns out that Mr. Libeskind alone wields something called "the Libeskind Vision," which he alone can interpret for the rest of us.

To a cynic, the vision might appear to be a tool whose primary function is to establish Mr. Libeskind's right to design Freedom Tower without meddling by others. But we are assured by Mr. Libeskind that the vision is spiritual in nature. Others have called it art.

Indeed, in some circles, the notion has taken hold that the Libeskind Vision should be seen as a bulwark against the spiritual impoverishment of a commercial society. Fragile though it may be, and all the more deserving of our support on account of its frailty, the Libeskind Vision is virtually all that stands between us and the coils of materialism, represented here by New York real estate developers and the architects who cravenly submit to their wanton demands.

In this high biblical comedy, Mr. Childs and his client, Larry A. Silverstein, have been cast in the role of twin Goliaths to Mr. Libeskind's David. The twins represent the profane world of leases, legal battles, profit-taking, slick buildings and the billions it takes to pay for them. David represents art and spirit — a Wedge of Light!

As farcical as this scenario is, Mr. Libeskind emerges as a sympathetic figure despite himself: a victim of the dream he must have wished for.

By that, I am not referring to his commission as ground zero's master planner. Terrible as this responsibility must be, worse fates can befall an architect with few completed buildings to his credit. But I'm thinking about a wish practically universal among architects: the desire for a dream client, who writes the checks and forever after holds his tongue.

But dreams often turn rapidly into nightmares. The ideal patron can turn out to be the client from hell.

At ground zero, the ideal patron arrived earlier this year in the form of Governor Pataki. He has been paving the road with good intentions ever since.

The support of the governor has turned out to more damaging than any opposition from the Goliaths of commerce. That, in my view, is because of politics.

As the Republican convention approaches, it is a reminder of how political the ground zero process has been.

As Adam Nagourney reported in The New York Times in January, the events of 9/11 were crucial to New York's sales pitch to the Bush administration to play host to the convention. "What we focused on was that New York was the best background for the convention, growing out of the events of Sept. 11," Roland W. Betts, a member of the committee of Republicans assembled by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to lobby the White House, told Mr. Nagourney. "The alternatives were inappropriate. Florida would have been all about the last election, and we would have to relive hanging chads."

The story illustrates the degree to which cultural and political decisions cannot be viewed in isolation.

Politics, art, propaganda and advertising all deal with the manipulation of images. In Mr. Libeskind's vision, Freedom Tower is represented as the Statue of Liberty's landlocked twin, a stylized figure with arm held aloft to hold a broadcasting antenna. It's a kitschy idea and might be likable for that, were it possible to separate the image from politics.

But in this context, the Statue of Liberty is not a politically neutral symbol, any more than the word patriot is a politically neutral term when used to name an act of Congress. It is a logo: the visual icon of a national brand that does not entice all shoppers.

With its symbolic height of 1,776 feet and its upraised arm, the Freedom Tower is a piece of bombast. It responds in a particular way to a particular event. It is being forced upon us, by public officials whose political agendas are hardly obscure. And it does not speak for those of us who believe it is wrong to nationalize ground zero symbolically.

Mr. Libeskind may be right to insist, as he did in an interview in the spring with Gabe Pressman on WNBC-TV, that some symbols are too powerful to be appropriated by particular groups. But while Mr. Libeskind may deny that he is an instrument of the state, he has become one nonetheless, appropriating symbols for political use.

Let me be clear: I am not suggesting that Mr. Libeskind was cynically appealing to the beliefs of public officials when he was devising his symbolic vocabulary. Nor am I saying that he would knowingly conspire with politicians to create a re-election billboard.

But public officials have failed to reckon with the political connotations of this design vocabulary. If Governor Pataki were truly a good client, he would have pointed out that even words and images with innocent intentions can easily be read as partisan.

I can't imagine a successful design for Freedom Tower until these issues of meaning are sorted out. Mr. Libeskind's vision emerged from a study of ideas, not a design competition. If our officials want to attain the cultural authority they clearly seek, much more study is needed.

Recall the terms set in February, when Mr. Libeskind was chosen to help the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation design a master plan. There was no "winning plan." Rather, the design study was in the nature of a job audition to hire an architect or a team to help prepare one.

The job description did not include the design of individual buildings. Mr. Libeskind stated then: "It has to be done by different architects. That's the way New York was built."

The study project stood for something valuable: the hope that ideas could find their way in the modern world.

The inclusion of Mr. Libeskind was also a sign of hope. He represented a potential that his designs for ground zero have yet to fulfill. But now there is nobody there to say no. Bad choice. Try it another way. This is not O.K. That's better. Almost. Start over. Again. Thus has Mr. Libeskind denied himself the creative freedom to think things through in the light of history.

I doubt Mr. Libeskind wants to be locked into this position. But there he is, alone with his symbols and his interpretations of them. What I am hearing very clearly right now is the sound of someone who doesn't know how to ask for help.

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/11/29/arts/29musc.1.jpg

The Statue of Liberty's iconic arm is echoed in Daniel Libeskind's tower.

[NoyokA]

One week countdown.

[JMGarcia]

I doubt it will be released to the public on Monday the 15th. The LMDC might see it then but it will take a few days for them and the pols to figure out how best to politically present it and get the press together etc.

I figure it'll be Wed. or Thurs. at the earliest.

[NoyokA]

I bet they've already seen it. It should be released to the public on Monday.

[JMGarcia]

Here's hoping, :D but don't get too disappointed if it takes a few more days.

[NoyokA]

The memorial competition was delayed a few days, I wouldnt be suprised at all if this is too.

[NYguy]

If history is any indication, we should start hearing some details by the end of the week...

[Freedom Tower]

Well, either that or history would show that there will be one final extension of the deadline :? I sure hope not.

[NYguy]

Any more extensions, and they should boot Libeskind....(the reason for the delays)

[emmeka]

Dont say that!

I actualy like the libeskind project. If we actualy booted him out then we wouldnt see a new wtc till 2010 unless we kept the project.

[TonyO]

The Donald had this to say about the WTC site in Esquire:

"The World Trade Center was never appreciated until its death. Now people realize how great it was. There are very mixed views on what to do. If you try to build something bigger, it might become a target. Who's gonna occupy that space? In another sense, it certainly seems the fitting thing to do—to build something bigger and better than what was there before. Unfortunately, I don't think what they're building is going to be as good as what was there. "

Why bother ballyhooing the "release" of the new design when it has to stick to Libeskind's plan exactly? Once the public realizes that his wedge is actually going to be what we look at everyday I think things will change. Trump is right, better is the only way to go.

[NYguy]

Dont say that!

I actualy like the libeskind project. If we actualy booted him out then we wouldnt see a new wtc till 2010 unless we kept the project.

It's not Libeskind's project and we already have his sight plan. Booting him wouldn't matter, it would get things moving a lot smoother (meaning quicker). We would have had the final design for Freedom Tower back on October if not for his whining about the "statue of liberty" design.

It makes you wonder, which landmark got destroyed anyway?

[JMGarcia]

I think you are placing too much faith in Childs coming through, especially with Silverstein pulling his strings.

[JMGarcia]

More Revisions in Plans for New York's Tallest Tower
By DAVID W. DUNLAP

Published: December 10, 2003


The nearly completed design for the signature tower at the World Trade Center site would recapture the title of world's tallest building for New York City without forcing anyone to work higher than 70 stories in the sky.

Gov. George E. Pataki, who effectively controls the rebuilding process at ground zero, will unveil the plan next week. It will bear little resemblance to the asymmetrical and angular design by Daniel Libeskind that has been in the public eye for almost a year. Instead, it is largely the work of David M. Childs, the architect for the tower's developer, Larry A. Silverstein.


Those who have seen the design of the Freedom Tower, as Mr. Pataki calls it, describe a torqued and tapering form culminating in an unoccupied, open-air structure filled with cables, trusses, antennas and — recalling the energy source that helped settle Lower Manhattan 350 years ago — windmills that may generate 20 percent of the electrical power needed by the building.

The 70-story occupied part of the Freedom Tower would rise 1,000 to 1,100 feet, more than 200 feet shorter than the twin towers. But the open-air structure would reach 1,776 feet, exceeding Taipei 101, which is being built on Taiwan, and would take the world's tallest title from the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which took it from the Sears Tower in Chicago, which took it from the trade center. The Freedom Tower's antenna would reach 2,000 feet.

This unusual hybrid would allow New York to "reclaim our skyline," the governor said in October, while acknowledging that most New Yorkers — 62 percent, according to a recent New York Times Poll — would not be willing to work in one of the higher floors of a new building at the trade center site.

What that leaves is a framework in which turbines can be installed to create a kind of vertical wind farm on the shores of the Hudson River.

"There is nothing about the technology that's unusual or experimental," said Ashok Gupta, the director of the air and energy program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, who has been advising state officials on environmental issues and has seen the plan. "It's the application of it which is different and new. We have the opportunity because we want to build a very tall tower and not occupy a large part of it."

Mr. Gupta said the idea of a building producing some of its own energy was particularly appealing given the history of the site. "What happened on 9/11 was indirectly and in part related to the fact that we get a large part of our energy from parts of the world that seem not to like us," he said.

"The word `freedom' is great," Mr. Gupta said. "For us, `freedom' means freedom from pollution, freedom from oil, freedom from global warming."

Mr. Gupta said the altitude of the building and its location close to the confluence of the Hudson and East Rivers might mean that the turbines would generate electricity at least 40 percent of the time. That might be enough, he said, to cover the base power demand — that is, the minimum needed overnight when most offices are closed — but nowhere near peak demand on a hot summer work day.

The windmills, like the 1,776-foot height and the building's torque and taper, seem virtually certain to be among the elements that the public will see next week. But the design of the open-air structure at the top, which will bear on its relationship to the four other office towers envisioned at the site, has yet to be resolved or approved by state officials.

Governor Pataki has set a deadline of Monday for receipt of the plan. He will be the ultimate arbiter, acting through the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the trade center property, and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which is charged with planning the site.

Asked yesterday about the status of the design, Matthew Higgins, the chief operating officer of the development corporation, said only, "We're excited by the progress, but more work remains to be done."

It seems safe to say that the design will keep changing until the last moment, given the tumultuous relationship between Mr. Libeskind, who is the master planner of the trade center site, and Mr. Childs, a partner in Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, who is working for Silverstein Properties.

However, enough is known with certainty about Freedom Tower that a number of people who have seen the plans were willing to discuss the project yesterday, most of them making anonymity a condition of doing so.

Until the governor announces the plan, no renderings of the building are likely to be made public. But it turns out that a conceptual forerunner of the Freedom Tower design was published Sept. 8, 2002, in an issue of The New York Times Magazine devoted to the past and future of the trade center site.

Drawing on a number of influences — including Isamu Noguchi, Buckminster Fuller and Frank Gehry — Guy Nordenson of Guy Nordenson & Associates, an engineer who is now working with Mr. Childs on the Freedom Tower, offered a torqued tower that would be "structurally sound, even at very great heights."

"An exterior structure of steel and an interior structure of concrete work together to resist both wind and gravity; the twisting of the entire form reduces the dynamic effects of the wind," said the caption for Mr. Nordenson's diagram, which showed a twisting building with a latticework top.

What it did not show — significantly — were the taper, the angled roof and the antenna that will characterize the Freedom Tower. The proportion of enclosed building to open framework is also markedly different.

But as a concept, it is closer to the Freedom Tower that Mr. Silverstein intends to build than the rendering by Mr. Libeskind that has been shown repeatedly in the year since he joined in the planning and design effort. (As late as last night, Mr. Libeskind's rendering still appeared on the Silverstein Properties Web site, in the "Development" category.)

Mr. Libeskind's plan was officially designated as the "design concept" for the trade center site in February 2003, more than six months after Mr. Nordenson's torqued tower was published.

Perhaps the biggest question in coming days will be the extent to which the new Freedom Tower design is seen as adhering to Mr. Libeskind's plan, which calls for the tallest building on the site to conjure and complement the Statue of Liberty, as well as crowning an ascending spiral of towers.

Neither Mr. Childs nor Mr. Libeskind would comment yesterday.

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/12/10/nyregion/10TOWE.jpg

The basic design concept of the torqued tower with an open latticework top was offered in September 2002 by Guy Nordenson, the engineer working with David M. Childs on the design of the new Freedom Tower at the trade center site. Mr. Nordenson was part of a group that The New York Times Magazine assembled in 2002 to gather ideas about what might be built at ground zero.

[TLOZ Link5]

Hopefully it will not bear that much resemblance to the above "basic design concept."

[TomAuch]

The 70-story occupied part of the Freedom Tower would rise 1,000 to 1,100 feet, more than 200 feet shorter than the twin towers. But the open-air structure would reach 1,776 feet, exceeding Taipei 101, which is being built on Taiwan, and would take the world's tallest title from the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which took it from the Sears Tower in Chicago, which took it from the trade center. The Freedom Tower's antenna would reach 2,000 feet.

This unusual hybrid would allow New York to "reclaim our skyline," the governor said in October, while acknowledging that most New Yorkers — 62 percent, according to a recent New York Times Poll — would not be willing to work in one of the higher floors of a new building at the trade center site.



NOOOOO!! THIS IS NOT RESTORING THE SKYLINE. WE WON'T EVEN HAVE A FREAKIN' OBSERVATION DECK MORE THAN 1,100 FEET!!!! :evil: :evil: :evil:

[BPC]

My God. A 70-story office building, topped by the world's tallest TV antenna, fronting a 4.5 acre, 30 foot deep pit in which will sit a ""museum of freedom" and a generic freestanding "culture building." And to think we're only 2 years removed from the WTC. Maybe we should let the site lie falow for 10 years so we can get a more enlightened groups of planners, politicians and architects.

[krulltime]

From JMGarcia post:

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/12/10/nyregion/10TOWE.jpg

UGLY...YET INTERESTING!....It does give me an idea for a building...I will like to see a building built anywhere in the world that gives the image of two buildings wraping around like this one, except without the awlful thing on top.

Could that be possible??? Expensive??

[ZippyTheChimp]

What it did not show — significantly — were the taper, the angled roof and the antenna that will characterize the Freedom Tower. The proportion of enclosed building to open framework is also markedly different.
If you make the height of that model 1776 ft, the open-air portion is about 22% of the building total, 390 ft.

Using 1100 ft as the office height, in the Childs design the open-air structure is 38% of the building height, 676 ft. That does not include the broadcast antenna.

[NYatKNIGHT]

That's the part that disturbs me, the proportion of occupied to unoccupied....

most New Yorkers — 62 percent, according to a recent New York Times Poll — would not be willing to work in one of the higher floors of a new building at the trade center site.
That's not thinking ahead. Wasn't the number much higher only a year ago? It's safe to assume the percentage who say they wouldn't work in the highest floors would drop by the time the building opens. More importantly, if even half the people say they would work in the upper floors they shouldn't have any problem filling the tower. Blame it on insurance rates, not scared New Yorkers.

Until the governor announces the plan, no renderings of the building are likely to be made public. Monday it is.

[NYguy]

From JMGarcia post:

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/12/10/nyregion/10TOWE.jpg

UGLY...YET INTERESTING!....It does give me an idea for a building...I will like to see a building built anywhere in the world that gives the image of two buildings wraping around like this one, except without the awlful thing on top.

Could that be possible??? Expensive??

It is interesting, although I'm not sure how the angled roof will play out in such a design. At least we won't be getting another "statue of liberty"....

[NYatKNIGHT]

It will still be a tapered design.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Blame it on insurance rates, not scared New Yorkers.

No matter its looks, Childs did a good job. He gave his client the building he wanted: seventy storey limit for favorable insurance rates, and a 2000 ft antenna to rent to broadcasters.

Conde Naste?

[Zoe]

Your right about the number of people willing to work in a high floor on that site going down after last year. In 10 years from now it will be about the same as it is anywhere else. You will always have people afraid of heights and uncomfortable in tall buildings. And with 38% of people polled saying they would work there, that means over 7 million people are willing. As you stated earlier, they should have no problem filling this building.

1100ft of office; 676ft of lattice work; 224ft of antenna = 45% of this building being nothing but emptiness. This better be one hell of a design :evil:

[JMGarcia]

It is interesting, although I'm not sure how the angled roof will play out in such a design. At least we won't be getting another "statue of liberty"....

Do not expect the lattice work to be a block like in these diagrams. Since my previous prediction proved so accurate ;) , I'll push my luck and try another one.

The lattice work will angle or spiral up to the antenna and will be quite reminiscent of Libeskind's original tower but just in lattice work and windmills rather than glass. In other words, I still suspect we will get another "statue of liberty" design rather than the more blocky building shown by the Times.

I'll have to see it but that might not be a bad thing. As much as I do like this:
http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/12/10/nyregion/10TOWE.jpg

I think its the proportions between building and lattice that make it work so well. Drop the building down further increasing the amount of lattice and it might look funny.

http://mysite.verizon.net/vze26pnp/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/mod1.jpghttp://mysite.verizon.net/vze26pnp/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/mod2.jpg

[NoyokA]

NY1 News:

WTC Site's Freedom Tower Is Completely Redesigned
DECEMBER 10TH, 2003

The new design for the signature Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site, which is set to be unveiled next week, looks nothing like the original, sources say.

It was originally designed in architect Daniel Libeskind’s master plan as an angular, asymmetrical tower. But the new, more detailed plans by David Childs, an architect hired by the World Trade Center lease-holder, calls for a tapered skyscraper with only 70 occupied stories, though it will still be the tallest structure in the world.

The top of the redesigned tower will feature a lattice of cables and antennas topping off at 2,000 feet above the ground. Initially, the tower was planned to be 1,776 feet tall, symbolic of the nation’s independence.

Wind turbines to generate some of the building's power will also be installed.

Libeskind won the design competition for the World Trade Center site, but Childs took over as the lead architect for the Freedom Tower in the summer, leading to some disputes between the two.

[emmeka]

There is already a building that twists like that somewhere, ill try and find a photo.

[emmeka]

Yes, this is it;

TURNING TORSO

location: Malmo

54 floors, 610ft

under construction

(residential tower)

http://www.turningtorso.com/grafik_ny/bildarkiv/perspektiv1_li.jpg http://www.turningtorso.com/grafik_ny/bildarkiv/perspektiv2_li.jpg

[ZippyTheChimp]

Though not obvious, I think Foster's twinned towers were torqued buildings. The base was hexangonal, and a triangular form was rotated as the building rose.

[Pottebaum]

I know nothing about buildings, but I really hope the actual rendering is more impressive that THAT.

[BrooklynRider]

I'll reserve overall judgement when the rendering is released, but my gut reaction is disappointment. "Lattice" work top? Sounds horrendous. I guess I wasn't so much after the world's tallest as much as an observation deck on the highest ocupiable floor in the world. 70 stories? Lattice work? A broadcast attena? The sucker's way out. It should be called running scared tower.

[TallGuy]

This new Freedom Tower design looks like a lit cigarette! It also resembles two fingers crossed for good luck. Definately very bad for you and I advise parents to tell their kids to keep away from this stuff! Perhaps we can write the words 'Philip Morris' down the length to help pay for it. I'm really starting to prefer nothing at all if we can't get the twin towers or something equally good there. Put up a Wal-Mart that we can tear down in ten years once we come to our senses.

[JMGarcia]

:roll:

[krulltime]

Put up a Wal-Mart that we can tear down in ten years once we come to our senses.

:o NO!...dont even joke about puting a Walmart in Manhattan...It might give them ideas. Walmart tries hard to take other businesses out of business!!!

But I do have to agree with you about the resemble of a lit cigarrete...Well make that 2 cigarretes together. :wink:

[JMGarcia]

Freedom Tower design to include wind turbines
By KAREN MATTHEWS
Associated Press Writer

December 10, 2003, 4:18 PM EST


NEW YORK -- Instead of the "gardens in the sky" first proposed by Daniel Libeskind, the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower at ground zero will house environmentally friendly windmills in the sky, people familiar with the latest plans for the building said Wednesday.

The building will house 70 floors of office space topped by broadcast antennas, wind turbines and cables resembling a suspension bridge.

The use of windmills in a tall building "is innovative and different and new and is something that will have to be designed carefully," said Ashok Gupta, director of the air and energy program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, who has been advising redevelopment officials on environmental issues.

Neill Coleman, a spokesman for the New York State League of Conservation Voters, said, "We're very excited about the idea of a renewable energy component to the design."

Detailed plans for the tower, the first that will go up at the World Trade Center site, will be released next week by Gov. George Pataki.

The design is a collaboration between Libeskind, who submitted the winning plan for redevelopment of the site, and David Childs, the chief architect for leaseholder Larry Silverstein.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that the design would bear little resemblance to Libeskind's original, asymmetrical structure. One familiar with the plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that the twisting, tapered building would still evoke the Statue of Liberty across the harbor, as Libeskind envisioned.

When Libeskind first presented his site plan one year ago, the occupied floors of the 1,776-foot tower were topped by "gardens in the sky." The building has undergone many revisions since then and its precise shape is still being determined, the source said.

Negotiations between Childs and Libeskind have been contentious and are continuing.

Asked about the building on Tuesday, Libeskind said, "in the end, I would attempt to make sure the Freedom Tower fits in the entire setting" of his original plan.

A spokesman for Silverstein declined to comment.

Matthew Higgins, chief operating officer of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., said: "We're excited by the progress on the building, but more work remains to be done."
Copyright © 2003, The Associated Press

[krulltime]

Yes, this is it;

TURNING TORSO

location: Malmo

54 floors, 610ft

under construction

(residential tower)

http://www.turningtorso.com/grafik_ny/bildarkiv/perspektiv1_li.jpg http://www.turningtorso.com/grafik_ny/bildarkiv/perspektiv2_li.jpg

Now this is a work of art! :P Thanks alot Emmeka

[Jasonik]

Calatrava, no?

[TomAuch]

The building will house 70 floors of office space topped by broadcast antennas, wind turbines and cables resembling a suspension bridge.

What would this look like?


Your right about the number of people willing to work in a high floor on that site going down after last year. In 10 years from now it will be about the same as it is anywhere else. You will always have people afraid of heights and uncomfortable in tall buildings. And with 38% of people polled saying they would work there, that means over 7 million people are willing. As you stated earlier, they should have no problem filling this building.

1100ft of office; 676ft of lattice work; 224ft of antenna = 45% of this building being nothing but emptiness. This better be one hell of a design :evil:

You're right, but there are several factors we have to take into account. We have to look at how the lattice is intergrated with the rest of the building aesthetically. I'm hoping they could just enclose the majority of the lattice work, which would at least give it the FEEL of a real building, and put an observation deck and resturaunt toward the top. There's no way a 1,100 observation deck will suceed when there's over 600 feet of empty space that could be utilized.

[TomAuch]

My God. A 70-story office building, topped by the world's tallest TV antenna, fronting a 4.5 acre, 30 foot deep pit in which will sit a ""museum of freedom" and a generic freestanding "culture building." And to think we're only 2 years removed from the WTC. Maybe we should let the site lie falow for 10 years so we can get a more enlightened groups of planners, politicians and architects.

I agree, barring from the fact that someone seals Silverstein and the Memorialists in cryogenics. :wink:

[ZippyTheChimp]

Calatrava, no?
Yes.
http://www.turningtorso.com/e_default.asp

[NYguy]

One familiar with the plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that the twisting, tapered building would still evoke the Statue of Liberty across the harbor, as Libeskind envisioned.

I don't have a problem with that, as long as it isn't intended to be the shape of the statue of liberty. I'm still intrigued by the windmill idea (taken from the JETS?), but I'll have to see the renderings...

[TomAuch]

Yes, this is it;

TURNING TORSO

location: Malmo

54 floors, 610ft

under construction

(residential tower)

http://www.turningtorso.com/grafik_ny/bildarkiv/perspektiv1_li.jpg http://www.turningtorso.com/grafik_ny/bildarkiv/perspektiv2_li.jpg

Now this is a work of art! :P Thanks alot Emmeka

I like this building ten times better than what's been described. Maybe we should just fire Childs and Libeskind and hire Calatrava to design the Freedom Tower (he could just make this tower taller).

[JMGarcia]

Its going to be practically impossible to not see this building without a preconceived notion about whether you'll like it or not it seems. Most people have thought about it a lot and seem to have very strict, inflexible criteria as to what is acceptable and what is not.

I personally will be shocked if even 1 person changes their opinion based on the quality of the actual building rather than their expectations of what it should be.

[ZippyTheChimp]

From what was written, my concern is the relative size of the lattice structure. I would be speculating with any comments on how it will look. Nothing to do but wait for the release.

On reading a statistical description of the Calatrava building, how many of us would have visualized the rendering?

[Kris]

December 11, 2003

BLOCKS

The New Look at Ground Zero May Be the Oldest

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

THERE is, as the public will learn next week, a difference between a plan and a design, a design and a design concept. All the difference in the world.

For 10 months, an image of the future World Trade Center site by Studio Daniel Libeskind has circulated widely. Its architectural signature was a building — Gov. George E. Pataki called it the Freedom Tower — twice as tall as any other on the site. This was a silvery, complex crystalline form with an angular spire that rose along its western edge and then soared even farther skyward to a needle tip 1,776 feet high.

Mr. Pataki said this design "promises to add an element of modern vision and magnificence to the already striking New York City skyline" when it was chosen in February as the "design concept" for the trade center site by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Seven months later, during which time the notion of a "design concept" had morphed in official parlance into the "master plan," Mr. Libeskind reported, "After much study and evaluation, the plan's essential elements remain clearly intact."

At the same time Mr. Libeskind was shoring up the overall plan, he was losing control of the design of Freedom Tower.

That design is now a torqued and tapering shaft culminating in an open framework of cables, trusses and windmills reaching the height of 1,776 feet, with an antenna scraping the sky at 2,000 feet. The architect is David M. Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, working for the developer Larry A. Silverstein, along with the engineer Guy Nordenson.

In the middle of what state officials are always proud to describe as a transparent planning process, a private developer has been pursuing his own vision for the site.

This may put both Mr. Pataki and Mr. Libeskind in an awkward spot next week, when the governor is supposed to receive the final design and then, presumably, present it to the public. Artful language may be needed to reconcile Mr. Childs's design with Mr. Libeskind's plan, if the goal, indeed, is to paint this as a seamless and inevitable transition.

As the official "master plan architect for the World Trade Center site," Mr. Libeskind may face the choice of endorsing someone else's design as a reflection of his own intent (unless some architectural feature is added that permits him more of a claim of authorship) or certifying at least that the Skidmore design is consonant with his overall plan.

Neither Mr. Libeskind nor Mr. Childs is discussing the matter publicly.

The idea of a torqued tower at the trade center site can be traced to the days immediately after the attack. On Sept. 17, 2001, the architect Richard Dattner sketched a linked pair of twisted towers, not quite as high as the originals. He refined the design and sent out about 50 booklets describing the proposal. One went to Mr. Silverstein, the commercial leaseholder at the site, and was forwarded to Mr. Childs, who was already working for Silverstein Properties.

"Larry was most intrigued by them (as was I)," Mr. Childs wrote to Mr. Dattner on Oct. 12, 2001, "and he thought that all of us advising him should be aware of this."

A year later — and careful not to claim sole authorship — Mr. Nordenson presented a torqued tower concept in The New York Times Magazine. There were, he noted, many precedents in the work of Isamu Noguchi, Frank Gehry and Mr. Dattner, among others.

Until the final design is unveiled next week, it would be premature to guess how successfully the latest version of Freedom Tower will fit into Mr. Libeskind's plan. But the fact that its origins predate the plan by many months suggests something of the challenge.

Studio Daniel Libeskind lost its urban planning consultant yesterday when Gary A. Hack resigned from the position, citing the "immense embarrassment" caused by two articles this week in The New York Post that described a lecture he delivered in October at the State University of New York in Buffalo.

The Post quoted Mr. Hack as describing the contest to plan the rebuilding of the trade center as the "architectural equivalent of nuclear war." The other finalist was a collective known as Think, which proposed two open latticework towers. "We began to refer to the other scheme, and got others to refer to it, as `the skeleton,' " Mr. Hack was quoted as saying.

In a statement issued by his office at the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Hack apologized for "overemphasizing the public perception of the project" and said he was not speaking for Studio Daniel Libeskind.

But he also said, "The published comments were lifted out of context to serve the journalist's longstanding agenda of subverting the plan."

William Neuman, who wrote the Post articles after spending two months trying to obtain a tape of the lecture, said, "It appears Gary Hack has been stung by the truth."


Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

[NYguy]

DAILY NEWS...

WTC tower power struggle
Architects, on deadline, not speaking

By MAGGIE HABERMAN

The two architects on the Ground Zero Freedom Tower project can't agree on a design, with one even bringing his lawyer to a meeting, sources said yesterday.

The fractious relationship between Ground Zero master planner Daniel Libeskind and architect David Childs imploded on Monday, exactly a week before Gov. Pataki's deadline for the two to produce a concept for the tower.

The meeting, where Libeskind showed up with his lawyer, forced rebuilding officials to try to settle the fight, but to no avail, the sources said.

The two architects have not met since, the sources said.

Libeskind alluded to the fight during a talk at the 92nd St. Y on Tuesday, saying the changes to his original design for a 1,776-foot Freedom Tower have been a "struggle."

"To maintain [the memory of Sept. 11, 2001] within that entire site is part of what I'm attempting to do in my so-called collaboration," Libeskind said. "It's a tough thing. It's not easy."

Childs works for World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein, who is paying for the tower. Silverstein had leased the twin towers complex just two months before it was destroyed by the terror attacks.

Childs and Libeskind had managed to make some progress about structural elements before the Monday blowup, sources said.

Among other major changes, the tower is taller than originally proposed, contains more office space and is topped by 500 feet of space filled with turbines, the sources said.

A source close to Libeskind said the architect has been opposed to the turbines and the scale of the building for weeks but that his objections were ignored.

That spurred him to bring his lawyer, Ed Hayes, to the meeting and demand to be heard.

But another source said Libeskind had started noisily protesting only in the last two weeks, after previously agreeing to changes that he and Childs had worked on.

Either way, the meeting "did not go smoothly," said one source.

Hayes would say only, "The master plan must be adhered to, and both sides must find a solution."

Childs declined to comment.

Lower Manhattan Development Corp. President Kevin Rampe said there are always creative differences on such projects but the final design will make the public proud.

[NYguy]

NY POST...

MADHOUSE

By WILLIAM NEUMAN

December 11, 2003 -- The fight over the Ground Zero Freedom Tower has spiraled completely out of control, with accusations of a "Watergate break-in" and bitter feuding between the two key architects, sources said yesterday.

The collaboration between World Trade Center master planner Daniel Libeskind and David Childs, the architect for developer Larry Silverstein, is on the verge of breaking down and the pair are not even speaking.

As the two go head to head over their dueling plans for the 1,776-foot tower's design, top aides to Gov. Pataki and officials at the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. were scrambling yesterday to salvage the fractured partnership.

The lowlights of the last week include:

* With just days to go before the Dec. 15 date Pataki set for the public unveiling of the final version Freedom Tower, the two architects have not agreed on the design.

* Libeskind showed up Monday with his lawyer Ed Hayes at what was supposed to be a crucial creative meeting - provoking a showdown with Silverstein's project director, who declared he was not going to negotiate the tower design through lawyers.

* The project director, Janno Lieber, summoned LMDC head Kevin Rampe to a tense emergency meeting, where Hayes insisted the tower adhere to Libeskind's design - and then telephoned Pataki chief of staff John Cahill to back him up.

* A group of Libeskind staffers went to Childs' Skidmore Owings & Merrill office at about 10:30 p.m. last Thursday and began taking documents and photographing drawings and models over the protests of stunned Skidmore staffers, who have dubbed the episode "the Watergate break-in."

There was some shouting as young Skidmore architects tried to shield drawings from the Libeskind staffers, who had brought along lights and other professional photo gear.

* The next day, Libeskind used the plundered material in a private meeting with Cahill, and Pataki's communications director Lisa Stoll, where he declared Childs' building did not fit into his trade center master plan. He also presented his own plan for the tower.

* The warring architects were scheduled to meet with Pataki today to show him a compromise plan for the trade center's iconic tower - but officials say that meeting is not likely to happen.

At the heart of the rift is a debate over what the Freedom Tower - slated to be the tallest building in the world - should look like and who should control the design.

Libeskind wants a building with an angular, asymmetrical top roughly similar to pictures in his master plan, evoking the upraised torch of the Statue of Liberty.

For his part, Childs has tried to modify the top to work better with his design for the lower portions of the tower, which has been described as a twisting form.

The Freedom Tower has already gone through numerous versions as Childs worked to modify his design to look more like Libeskind's asymmetrical sketches.

The Silverstein camp charges that along the way Libeskind has agreed to several successive alterations - representing significant compromise - only to have Libeskind then change course and yank his approval each time.

"Larry is at the end of the line," said a source. "He's not going to redesign his building again."

Asked about the tower Tuesday at a forum at the 92nd Street Y, Libeskind said, "All I can say is it's a struggle to create something.

"To maintain that memory [of 9/11] within that entire site is what I'm attempting to do in my so-called collaboration with [Skidmore Owings & Merrill] . . . It's not easy."

Development officials hope they can still salvage a compromise. If not, they have discussed the possibility of letting both sides go public with their designs and seeing how they are received.

[ZippyTheChimp]

:roll:

Bring in Piano.

[Zzed]

perhaps the memorial should consist of Libeskind and Childs standing on a pile of rubble with their hands around each other's throats ... with the rest of the site empty.

[NYguy]

perhaps the memorial should consist of Libeskind and Childs standing on a pile of rubble with their hands around each other's throats ... with the rest of the site empty.

LOL...sounds pretty good....

I blame Pataki for this feuding. Roles should have been clearly defined, but its apparent that Libeskind is willing to use his lawyers to make a mockery of the rebuilding.

[JMGarcia]

This is so fascinating.

When it comes down to it both plans give Silverstein the office space he wants at the height he wants (although Libeskind's roof goes higher than Childs' because of the angle) and both give the broadcasters the antennas they want at the height they want.

The rest is aesthetics. Nothing more.

Why Silverstein (via Childs) of all people should have the final say on aesthetics is beyond me.

People who don't like Libeskind's design are siding with Childs' (or should I say Nordenson's) in the hope (possibly mis-placed since we haven't even seen it) that they will like it better.

The word "tapering" consistently used to describe Childs' design worries me. Nordenson's doesn't taper in the least and it is its strong point over Libeskind's design. The word taper makes me thing that it'll look like a twisting version of the cone in THINK's Great Room design just with the top half empty.

In any case it is looking more likely that the design will be delayed or that we will only get a very prelimanary rendering that will continue to change significantly.

[finnman69]

It will be Libeskind, not David Childs that loses this clash of the egos.

[finnman69]

another question....why did SOM's staff let Libeskind's office to take photos of models and drawings? I suppose there has been a lot of coordination between the offices and perhaps some late night brainstorming together, but to just start taking photos without permission? SOM could sue Libeskind's ass off IMO.

[NYguy]

Its becoming clearer that Childs has the "larger" tower, Libeskind still insisting on the slender, "raised torch" while Childs is sticking to a more monolithic design (one that twists). Both architects have said before that their own visions "echoed" the staue of liberty. It would have been nice if we could at least have seen the designs in progress...

[NYguy]

Why Silverstein (via Childs) of all people should have the final say on aesthetics is beyond me.

People who don't like Libeskind's design are siding with Childs' (or should I say Nordenson's) in the hope (possibly mis-placed since we haven't even seen it) that they will like it better.

Its not that people necessarily like Child's design better, but that they know they don't like Libeskind's. Almost any alternative would be welcome at this point...

[JMGarcia]

Its becoming clearer that Childs has the "larger" tower, Libeskind still insisting on the slender, "raised torch" while Childs is sticking to a more monolithic design (one that twists). Both architects have said before that their own visions "echoed" the staue of liberty. It would have been nice if we could at least have seen the designs in progress...

Hardly. Its a lot of wishful thinking IMO. I give it a 50-50 chance of being more impressive.

At this point my favorite is the original Nordenson design. Go figure. :)

[TonyO]

Why Silverstein (via Childs) of all people should have the final say on aesthetics is beyond me.

People who don't like Libeskind's design are siding with Childs' (or should I say Nordenson's) in the hope (possibly mis-placed since we haven't even seen it) that they will like it better.


Silverstein is paying for it, that's why.

The reason why I lean towards Childs design is that all we have seen of Libeskind is his design with a spindly spire...not the definition of a powerful or ambitious skyline IMO. Childs design (as with most of his buildings) is said to evoke the robust skyline that the towers did. Easy choice if you ask me.

[JMGarcia]

Childs design (as with most of his buildings) is said to evoke the robust skyline that the towers did.

I have never seen that said but if it is true then that'll be great. Other than that you just proved my point - don't like the Libeskind design so the Childs' design must be better. Not necessarily IMO.

The insurers are paying for it, not Silverstein. If you believe that Silverstein should be the one to call the shots then there should have been absolutely NO public input at all. Again, I think people side with Silverstein just to be against the Libeskind design.

That whole idea has been promoted by certain groups in the twisted logic that somehow if Libeskind is removed then the twin towers will magically appear.

[TonyO]

Until the rendering comes out of Childs' design, I won't say that I prefer it...I'm just going on history here. I like SOM buildings, and really don't like the Libeskind wedges with spires (the only skyscraper designs of his I have seen).

Sure the insurers are ultimately paying for it. What I should have said was that Silverstein will be making the executive decision because he has the $.

[JMGarcia]

All I can say is that I'm glad the public had some input or we wouldn't even be getting a "skyline element".

Here's how I see the massing at least from what we've been told so far.

http://mysite.verizon.net/vze26pnp/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/childsnew4.jpghttp://mysite.verizon.net/vze26pnp/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/libnew.jpg

I really wish they'd let them both out and take some public input on them and let Silverstien be damned.

[Freedom Tower]

Until December 15th you can't completely condemn the design. We still have just a tiny idea of what it's like. Although it's a bad tiny idea :(

[JMGarcia]

I like this design a lot:

http://mysite.verizon.net/vze26pnp/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/I4.jpg
http://mysite.verizon.net/vze26pnp/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/I3.jpg

I just hope we don't get the tapering, cable filled, budget version with the glass facade barely poking above 7 WTC.

[billyblancoNYC]

The building itself will be 1000-1100 ft, taller than anything else down there. Give it a chance. People are downing it and haven't even SEEN it.

[NYguy]

Why Silverstein (via Childs) of all people should have the final say on aesthetics is beyond me.

People who don't like Libeskind's design are siding with Childs' (or should I say Nordenson's) in the hope (possibly mis-placed since we haven't even seen it) that they will like it better.


Silverstein is paying for it, that's why.

The reason why I lean towards Childs design is that all we have seen of Libeskind is his design with a spindly spire...not the definition of a powerful or ambitious skyline IMO. Childs design (as with most of his buildings) is said to evoke the robust skyline that the towers did. Easy choice if you ask me.


That's one reason why I have decided to go with Child's design (not even having seen it). But other than that, Libeskind's insistance on the "raised torch" of the statue of liberty only makes the tower "smaller" at the top, and he has been against anything higher than 1,776 ft, even if its just an antenna that won't count in the height anyway.

Easy choice for me also.

[NYguy]

The building itself will be 1000-1100 ft, taller than anything else down there. Give it a chance. People are downing it and haven't even SEEN it.

That's an excellent point, one that is often overlooked. If the "occupied" space of the building does rise to 1,000 or 1,100 ft., that would make it roughly as high as the EMPIRE STATE BUILDING or the JOHN HANCOCK CENTER in Chicago...

A report in the Daily News said the tower was topped by 500 ft of latticework...maybe the occupied space is higher? We won't really know for sure until next week. We also won't know anything about the observation deck or restaurant, there has been no mention of either, so they could be anywhere in the tower...

[JMC]

JMGarcia...that drawing is pretty funny! Thanks!

[JMGarcia]

But other than that, Libeskind's insistance on the "raised torch" of the statue of liberty only makes the tower "smaller" at the top

There's the real catcher isn't it and I'll agree wholeheartedly.

But, is Child's tapering cables and trusses really larger or not. I wish I had you faith that it will be. :)

[NYguy]

I don't know, it sounds that way. I wish I could just smack them both....

[JMGarcia]

LOL - maybe Pataki needs to bitch slap them both. I'm getting impatient. ;)

[NYguy]

NY Times

http://www.pbase.com/image/24075435/large.jpg

[Gulcrapek]

I'm glad that those aren't on board anymore. They look stunted.

[TonyO]

Too much to wish for. :(

But we will see what the future holds in 4 days.

[JMGarcia]

NY Times

http://www.pbase.com/image/24075435/large.jpg

That is beyond bad.

The refined version is soooo much better.

http://mysite.verizon.net/vze26pnp/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/I3.jpg

[JMGarcia]

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Master Planner or Master Builder?
By RAFAEL VIÑOLY (THINK team leader for the uninitiated)

Published: December 12, 2003
NY TIMES

As Gov. George E. Pataki prepares to unveil the latest design of the "Freedom Tower" at ground zero, the long-simmering dispute between Daniel Libeskind, the master planner for the site, and David M. Childs, the architect chosen by Larry Silverstein, the commercial leaseholder at the site, to design the tower has come to a boil. Although this is unfortunate and unprofessional, it will probably pale in comparison to the struggle for symbolic control of the rebuilding after the designer of the World Trade Center memorial is chosen next week. That is the way things will go if certain crucial points are not clarified now.

As a member of the team that was the runner-up to Daniel Libeskind as master planner of the World Trade Center site, I am familiar with the trajectory of the process. As a New Yorker, I care deeply about the future of Lower Manhattan, and how the rebuilding will honor the memory of those lost on 9/11 and shape our future as a dynamic metropolis.

Much of the confusion that reigns today centers on the public's — and apparently Governor Pataki's — misunderstanding of what constitutes a "master plan." Master planning, although usually done by architects, is not the same as architectural design. The planner decides where buildings go, how big they are, the kind of urban form they create and the purposes they serve. A planner marks out roads and figures out how the underground infrastructure relates to the surface infrastructure. What a master planner does not do is design the buildings themselves.

None of this is to say that a master plan should not have an enormous impact on a site's development. (After all, I too wanted the job.) A master plan is an important tool in a city's overall evolution, even if it does not mandate specific designs. Paris and Washington were shaped by master plans; on a smaller scale, so was Battery Park City. The outlines were set by a planner and then the details were filled in, to varying degrees of success, by individual architects.

The trouble at ground zero began with the governor's decision to support Mr. Libeskind's "vision" (what his rendering looked like) rather than the master planning ideas behind it. Unfortunately a vision is not a master plan, it is simply a version of what one particular architect would do within that plan.

Mr. Libeskind's master plan is a spiral of rising towers around the site where the twin towers were. This is a powerful urban form that can and should be respected. However, the detailed design that Mr. Libeskind incorporated into his rendering has too often been treated by the governor and others as a design guideline, which it is not.

This problem is particularly apparent when it comes to the memorial. In his rendering, Mr. Libeskind essentially designed the memorial itself. After all, the exposed slurry wall, the waterfall and the names of the public spaces he specified all had a commemorative function. What's wrong with this? Well, the task of creating a memorial was intentionally removed from the master-plan competition because it was supposed to be the subject of the memorial design competition. I think that the weaknesses in the finalist designs for the memorial are a consequence of having to design a memorial within a memorial.

In my view, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation has consistently failed to educate the public — and perhaps even the governor — as to what to expect (and not to expect) from a master plan.

How so? First the corporation asked Beyer Blinder Bell and other firms to put together six master plans. These weren't building designs. Rather, they were geometric shapes meant to give people the sense of what Lower Manhattan's cityscape might look like. These plans encountered public opposition not just because they were not very inspirational in themselves, but primarily because they were mistaken for architectural designs.

The corporation reacted to the public outrage by creating the Innovative Design Study, a sort of "noncompetition" that was supposed to identify one or more consultants to help the agency further develop the master plan for the site. This process resulted in the most exciting architectural event in years. It was from this competition that Mr. Libeskind's rendering was chosen. But instead of portraying the exercise as one step along a more deliberative path, the corporation created the impression that this was the final result.

No matter. There is still time to clarify the process and allow it to move forward in a fair, constructive and logical manner. For this to happen, though, the governor, the development corporation, Mr. Libeskind, Mr. Silverstein and the other parties need to agree to the following basic points, which any first-year architecture student would be able to derive from a textbook on master planning.

• Define the basic idea of the master plan as a spiral of structures around the footprints of the towers. This is Mr. Libeskind's vision — and it should be accepted.

• Assure the developers that the design of the buildings is the responsibility of their chosen architects.

• Prompt Mr. Libeskind to see to it that there is a set of precise design guidelines — guidelines that can preserve his urban form without restricting the architectural design of those buildings.

• Give control of the memorializing functions of the plan to the winner of the memorial design competition.

• Specify where cultural facilities will be placed and outline where the money for them will come from (and make sure that money is not diverted to other uses).

• Build more time into the project. To coordinate the laying of the Freedom Tower cornerstone with the Republican National Convention in New York next summer is an unrealistic goal that will compromise the success of all our efforts. Would it not be better to disappoint a few conventioneers than to let down all New Yorkers and the 9/11 families?

Rafael Viñoly is an architect.

------------------------------------

Rafael is absolutely right but nothing he says precludes Libeskind from designing one of the buildings. Pataki should have either said Libeskind or Childs and have been done with it. Better yet, let them both submit a design and let the public decide. I also agree with Rafael that the process can still be clarified as mentioned above.

[billyblancoNYC]

I'm all for having input, but I think it's crazy how everyone seems to think they own this site. It's only Larry Silverstein that's up shit's creek here, already losing hundreds of millions of dollars.

He's the man, he picked Childs. Childs will try to fit everything into Libeskind's plan as best he can. Other than that, just hope for the best. He doesn't HAVE to build anything inspiring, tall, etc.

Let's just see what we have, hopefully, on Monday.

[NYguy]

NY POST...

WTC'S 'WATERGATE'

By WILLIAM NEUMAN

December 12, 2003 -- Developer Larry Silverstein's Freedom Tower design team was so upset over an alleged raid on their offices by staffers of Ground Zero planner Daniel Libeskind that they brought in former Police Commissioner Howard Safir to investigate, sources said yesterday.

"They wanted to know what happened. They were very angry and they wanted to see what was behind it and who did it," said a source familiar with Safir's probe, which took place late last week.

Staffers at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Silverstein's architects, have been calling the Dec. 4 nighttime raid the "Watergate break-in."

The incident helped turn the rift between the two warring camps of architects into a chasm the size of the Ground Zero pit.

But Gov. Pataki made an attempt to bridge the gap yesterday, urging Libeskind and David Childs, Skidmore's lead architect, to set aside "fights over turf" that threaten to scuttle their collaboration on the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower.

Pataki has set a deadline of Monday for the pair to come up with a compromise design.

"We have two brilliant minds, two strong personalities," Pataki said at a ceremony to raise a symbolic steel beam marking progress in the construction of 7 WTC - which Childs designed and Silverstein is building.

"I am absolutely confident that the creation of this constructive genius is going to be a Freedom Tower that the world will look at for generations to come with awe and inspiration."

Libeskind and Childs sat next to each other and smiled during Pataki's remarks - and later they even declared their willingness to work together.

But afterward they went their separate ways and, despite the mounting pressure, by the end of the day had not met again to hammer out details of the 1,776-foot spire.

In place of direct meetings, development officials conducted shuttle diplomacy, holding separate sitdowns with both camps to discuss design changes.

"This is no way to design the tallest building in the world," said a source.

Libeskind wants the top of the building to closely resemble the original sketches in his master plan, while Childs has suggested instead a top he believes works better with the buildings torqued lower floors.

Libeskind is also opposed to Childs' plan to put electricity-generating wind turbines on the upper portions of the tower - largely because they conflict with his roof design.

Asked if the final version would resemble his initial concept, Libeskind said, "We hope so, yes.

"There are so many competing interests, so many different issues, such a complex set of forces that of course there are going to be so many things pushing the project in different directions," he said.

Childs said, "We've made tremendous progress. We're not finished. These things take a long time."

Meanwhile, sources who detailed the aftermath of the Dec. 4 raid said Safir, whose firm Safir Rosetti does security work for Silverstein, sent an investigator the next day to interview Skidmore staffers who were there at the time.

Skidmore says architects from Libeskind's staff entered their office and began taking documents and snapping photographs.

Libeskind used the material the next day in a meeting with top Pataki staffers to make the case that Childs was ignoring him.

"Any controversy in regard to either architect possessing drawings of the other is silly because they are supposed to be collaborating," said Ed Hayes, Libeskind's lawyer.

Sources said Safir's investigation was considered a precaution, and Skidmore and Silverstein have apparently not pressed the issue with Libeskind.

http://www.nypost.com/photos/news12120304a.jpg

MAN IN THE MIDDLE:
Gov. Pataki stands between rivals David Childs (right) and Daniel Libeskind at a Ground Zero ceremony yesterday.

[ZippyTheChimp]

It's only Larry Silverstein that's up shit's creek here, already losing hundreds of millions of dollars.

He doesn't HAVE to build anything inspiring, tall, etc.
All of Lower Manhattan is up shit's creek unless the site is properly developed.

Yes he does. This can't be a taller version of 7WTC, which will be a nice building, but nothing exceptional. Whatever is built should join the group of Woolworth, ESB, Chrysler, etc.

[Liz L]

I agree with you 110% Zippy, which is why I'm so disappointed...

If only they'd hired Cesar Pelli - he's one architect who can design a grand skyscraper and teach it how to soar.....

[Kris]

He's a hack, and you don't know jack.

[BrooklynRider]

He's a hack, and you don't know jack.

Yikes! That's a strong and personal lashing for an opinion.

[Clarknt67]

My God. A 70-story office building, topped by the world's tallest TV antenna, fronting a 4.5 acre, 30 foot deep pit in which will sit a ""museum of freedom" and a generic freestanding "culture building." And to think we're only 2 years removed from the WTC. Maybe we should let the site lie falow for 10 years so we can get a more enlightened groups of planners, politicians and architects.


Yeah, when you put it all together this way, it does sound like a garden of groteques in the making.

[ZippyTheChimp]

I agree minus 10%. There's enough Pelli in the neighborhood.

[Liz L]

Christian, I'm sorry I started a thread on an old topic - but it was the first time I'd heard about it. I guess I just won't assume anything I've just found out about is breaking news in the future. If I made any spelling mistakes, well, I was doing that post on my lunch break, so I was a little bit pressed for time.

But saying I "don't know jack" is a little bit harsh, don't you think?

And in my perhaps ignorant opinion, Pelli has designed some skyscrapers that are much nicer than Libeskind's; from the photos I've seen, I think his Bank of America Center in Charlotte is especially nice.

[TLOZ Link5]

Yeah, Christian. Lighten up a bit. :|

[Clarknt67]

Why Silverstein (via Childs) of all people should have the final say on aesthetics is beyond me.

Because he's paying to build it?

[Clarknt67]

[quote]The insurers are paying for it, not Silverstein.

Semantics. Who paid the insurance policy? Who are the insurance policies payable to? He isn't obliged to rebuild at Ground Zero. He could have taken the payout and retired.

[ZippyTheChimp]

That's not correct. Silverstein cannot take the money and go home. The insurance is only payable to rebuild what was destroyed. Silverstein said as much when he argued that he was obligated to rebuild all the lost office space. At that time the PA stated that if Silverstein vacated the lease agreement, the insurance was transferrable to the owner.

Also, Silverstein chose to keep the lease by continuing to make monthly payments. The PA was happy with the arangement.