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Since Sept. 11, much discussion has focused on the question of what to do with the site where the World Trade Center stood. Suggestions range from replicating them, erecting even taller skyscrapers, or building a permanent monument to the terrorists' victims. A recent Harris Poll shows Americans almost evenly divided on three options: rebuilding the Twin Towers (32%), building completely different buildings (31%), and having a monument and no building (30%). (See BW Online, 9/19/01, "The Height of Folly")
I believe that New Yorkers should resist the urge to recreate the twin towers, as satisfying as that might be as an act of defiance against terrorists. Instead, the Big Apple should build something even better -- a commercial district that's both a bustling business center and a nice place to live. This would best recapture New York's vital pulse.
A park and memorial should be certainly be elements of the design, but not its entirety. According to Frank E. Sanchis III, director of the Municipal Art Society, many people agree that the fragment of Tower 2's facade that withstood the collapse -- and has since been taken down -- is an icon that should be preserved in any memorial.
"A VIBRANT PLACE." "We have to have a solution that's about New York -- and the best thing [here] is walking the city," says architect Wendy Evans Joseph, a designer of the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington and past president of the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects. "We can memorialize all the lives that were lost by creating a vibrant place where people live."
Where to go for inspiration? Look only 100 yards to the west, to Battery Park City. In planning terms, this office and apartment complex is the antithesis of the World Trade Center. Battery Park City helped ignite the rage for "contextual" development, in which architects' priorities shifted from sculpturally striking edifices to buildings that worked with their neighbors to create a satisfying mosaic. In Battery Park City, also damaged in the attack, buildings are shorter but wide at the base, giving streets a feeling of enclosure and intimacy.
Today, people forget that when the towers went up in the early 1970s, they were criticized as crudely detailed and way out of scale with the more finely proportioned, filigreed high-rises elsewhere in the financial district. The center's surrounding plaza, a presumed public "amenity" that disrupted the street grid, was so huge and wind-swept that no scheme to make it more inviting worked, and pedestrians simply avoided it.
HALLOWED GROUND? Just as important, Battery Park City's public space, unlike the World Trade Center's, is subtly segmented into both grand and intimate settings. It takes advantage of the fine views: the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the panorama of New York harbor. Buildings are varied in style but use similar materials, massing, and motifs. By extending Battery Park City east, perhaps with more cutting-edge architecture and a hipper retail scene, the city could end up with a 24-hour commercial and financial hub that revels in its diversity.
Still unclear is how seriously leaseholder Larry Silverstein will take outside recommendations and what pressures outsiders can bring. But given the magnitude of the infrastructure repairs he'll be depending on, it's likely to be considerable. After initially proposing to rebuild the towers, Silverstein now says he's considering four 50-story buildings. Then there's the cleanup: If all the victims' remains cannot be disinterred and the site attains hallowed-ground status, all bets may be off.
What's paramount is to keep in mind what Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said at a memorial service in Yankee Stadium. "To those who say our city will never be the same, I say you're right. It will be better." A model neighborhood would be a way to make good that promise.
BusinessWeek Associate editor Khermouch has spent many summer weekends biking with his
family to Battery Park City -- and skirting the World Trade Center Edited by Thane Peterson
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Copyright 2001 , by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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